Sailor Moon: Banished
by Doctor-T
Summary: Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn are lost in deep space, after being banished to the far side of our galaxy. Caught up in an eternal conflict, now they're being hunted! Takes place immediately after Sailor Moon: Devastation. Contains multiple crossovers.
1. Chapter 1

**Sailor Moon: Banished**

_DISCLAIMER: It's the same as DATCLAIMER and DAOTHERCLAIMER. Anyone with more than the brainpower of a baitfish crossed with a politician already knows that Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon. I do, however, own several of the other minor characters in this story._

_This story takes place immediately after '_Sailor Moon: Devastation' _and both of these stories are __also part of the _'Love Hina: Crime and Punishment' _universe._

_Yes, this story will have crossovers, but even I don't know just who or what will show up in it yet. (Well, yes I do in a couple of cases, but saying that now would spoil the surprises). That is why it hasn't been posted in the 'Crossovers' section of this site._

_This first chapter mostly sets the scene, so bear with the descriptive scenes and imagery. Things will definitely heat up in Chapter Two._

_Now, please enjoy -_

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**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER ONE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Milky Way galaxy that held the parent sun of Earth was huge. Despite being only a medium sized spiral galaxy, it was still over one hundred thousand light years across, and contained between 200 and 400 billion separate stars. No one yet had managed to calculate the exact number of suns contained therein – and nor could or would anyone, human or otherwise, ever narrow the number down to more than an approximation.

Because the Milky Way was a spiral galaxy, it looked much the same from any location around its vast rim when viewed edge on. And so, when Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn finally burst from the wormhole created by Chronos, the God of Time, back into normal space, except for the startling brightness of the nearby stars, there was nothing else visible around them to suggest to the shocked pair that they were anywhere else but in the vicinity of their own familiar sun.

But both scared and grim faced sailor scouts knew better than to think that they were now anywhere near the solar system of their birth. Chronos just happened to be Sailor Pluto's nearly omnipotent father, and he had banished them both to the far side of the galaxy as punishment for them trying to prevent the Devastation Timeline from ever having occurred, to alter events back on Earth that had already happened and were meant to be.

Before being banished, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn had indeed succeeded with their desperate gamble to save their fellow sailor scouts – after a fashion, anyway. At Sailor Pluto's behest, Michiru Kaioh – Sailor Neptune - had stopped Usagi Tsukino – Sailor Moon – from entering the alley in Azabu-Juuban where she was fated to suffer a horrific experience at the hands of a molester, thereby triggering the conflagration that was meant to follow. Sailor Neptune's actions did, as planned by Sailor Pluto, cause a separate timeline to come into being at this point, in which the terrible events of the Devastation Timeline had never occurred. But because Chronos had prevented Sailor Saturn from destroying the original Devastation Timeline – although both banished sailor scouts were still unaware of this fact - instead of replacing the real timeline, this alternative one now existed in space/time _alongside_ the original one instead of supplanting it.

Even worse for the Sailor Scout of Time, a few days prior to this, because of Sailor Saturn and Chibiusa's pre-emptive actions in stopping Tuxedo Mask from entering a dimensional portal in Arisugawa Park and meeting his untimely death at the hands of the _Oni_ demons within, a _third_ alternate timeline had also come into totally unanticipated existence that very night, running parallel to the other two. So what was once the single, correct timeline had now multiplied into three different ones. And Chronos, seeing all that had transpired, had _not_ been amused.

Hence the two errant servitors being booted clean across the galaxy to this remote and uncharted region, thousands of light years from Earth.

The two banished sailor scouts had just materialized from the now fading space/time wormhole onto an ice-covered, slowly rotating cometary fragment in the Oort cloud of some unknown star in a totally unfamiliar sector of deep space. And as she stood there on the frozen ice and gas of the tiny chunk of debris, staring with fear at the wholly unknown stars wheeling slowly overhead, although she was trying very hard to conceal the fact from her companion, the grim faced Sailor Pluto was now gripped in the throes of utter desperation.

Sailor Pluto had always before been supremely confident about her powers and her natural ability to make the most out of any given situation. But now, abandoned in the trackless and unknown immensity of deepest space, with only little Hotaru for company, Sailor Pluto felt the cold chill of fear crawl up her spine. Although she had trekked the limitless gulfs of deep space before on more than one occasion, her previous ventures beyond the solar system of earth had always been to comparatively near regions of space, to worlds that she had already known to exist. And on the previous occasions the routes had already been travelled before by the other Lunarians of the Silver Millennium, so Pluto had always possessed the necessary information to be able to find her way back home again.

But not this time. Her father, Chronos, had made good and sure of that. Her and Sailor Saturn's present position was hundreds of times further away from their star, Sol, than she had ever been before. Thousands of light years away from home, on the extreme far side of the galaxy, she was completely and utterly lost.

Still, as she looked out into the star splashed void, Sailor Pluto realized that she at least had to maintain the pretence of confidence, for poor Hotaru's sake. Her far younger and much smaller companion was clinging to her for comfort, eyes wide with quite understandable terror at their more-than-merely frightening predicament.

As she felt the younger girl's fear and need for comfort, Sailor Pluto clenched her jaw and steeled her faltering nerves. It was her responsibility to protect Hotaru, and to get them both back home safely, first to Earth and then to Crystal Tokyo in the Thirtieth Century. The journey would no doubt be long and difficult – but certainly not impossible for them both. And she would not shirk from her momentous task. While there was life, there was hope…!

_I have to do this. I can do this! We can both make it back safely home…we can!_

The small, quavering, telepathic voice of Sailor Saturn broke into her thoughts, bringing her back to the here and now.

"_Setsuna-mama…?"_

"Yes, Hotaru-chan? It looks like our journey through the wormhole created by my father is at an end," Pluto projected back.

"But, Setsuna-mama, do you know where we are?"

"No, I don't, Hotaru-chan. I'm not omniscient like my father, Chronos, remember? All I can tell is that I think that we're on the far side of our galaxy, with over ninety thousand light years and the entire galactic core between us and home."

Hotaru gulped and tears appeared in her violet eyes, to instantly freeze and break off into small, floating droplets in the near absolute zero temperature of the blackness surrounding them. "That's…a really long way…!" she whispered. "Setsuna-mama, do you thank that we'll ever be able to get home from away out here, _ever?"_

Setsuna gave her a hug of reassurance. "Maybe, Hotaru-chan. The first thing that we have to do is find out exactly where we are. Luckily we can both survive in open space so being marooned on this asteroid won't kill us. And the absolute next thing that we have to do is to find you something to eat and drink really soon, as well, or else lack of those two essentials just might do what the absence of air can't."

"But we don't even know where we are," Hotaru wailed. "How are we ever going to find food and drink way out here in outer space? I don't wanna starve!"

"We'll find a way. Chronos didn't maroon us on this big chunk of rock and ice just to die. I can't open space/time wormholes to travel through across the entire width of the galaxy almost instantly like he can, but we both _can_ still sailor teleport between the stars – even if it does take far longer and several jumps to cross interstellar distances further than a couple of light years each time."

"Hey, Sailor Pluto, I've been wondering. How far exactly _can _you sailor-teleport, Setsuna-mama? In one go?"

"About two light years, Hotaru-chan. You can do about the same distance, I think, so if we hold hands when we jump you'll arrive at the same destination as I do. That way there'll be no chance of us getting separated, like could easily happen to us if we teleport separately."

Sailor Saturn gulped with fright. The last thing that she wanted was to lose her adopted mother way out here in the unknown abyss between the stars. If she did, there was a real and very frightening possibility that they would never ever find each other again.

"Don't worry, Setsuna-mama. I'll hold on tight to you, I promise!"

"There's no real need to get too nervous if we do accidentally get separated though, Hotaru-chan," the Sailor Scout of Time reassured her companion. "I – _and_ you – possess the ability to find planets around nearby stars at about the same distance as we can sailor-teleport – maybe two light years away. Out here in open space, with no distractions, I can also sense the emanations of your planetary power over almost interstellar distances too, so I'm sure that I'd be able to find you again without too much trouble if you were to get lost. And if you _do_ get lost, if you can't sense where I am and teleport back to me straight away, then just stay where you are, okay? Let _me_ come to _you!"_

"_Wow._ It's good to know that you can find me! If I get lost, I'll do just that, Setsuna-mama. I sure don't wanna be alone out here…!"

"Okay, Hotaru-chan. See, everything will work out just fine. Now, let me concentrate a bit and see if I can find out just what's in our stellar neighborhood."

With that, the green-haired sailor scout closed her eyes and began to scan the surrounding space with her ultra-keen cosmic senses.

"Luckily, Chronos dropped us off right in the center of a small star cluster, so there's at least two dozen stars within a few light years of our position," Sailor Pluto finally declared, her eyes still closed. "Wow, some of them are packed so closely together that there is less than a light year separating the different stars! There are several hundred thousand other suns in the whole cluster, itself…."

"Have you found any nearby planets?" Hotaru asked, her eyes closed as well as she tried hard to emulate the planet locating skills of her vastly more experienced companion. "I can't sense anything at all out here…"

"Not around the white dwarf star that this asteroid is orbiting. The closest other star to here is a double star system, with a red giant and another white dwarf star orbiting each other. It's just over two light years away and they don't have any planets either, I think…? Wait, they do…just one. But it's far too large for us, it's either a super giant planet or a brown dwarf star, about twelve times the size of Jupiter…! It's over half the size of the white dwarf star - so big, that's actually a triple star system."

"But how would such a system stay stable?" Hotaru wanted to know, staring with incomprehension at her adopted mother. "Why don't they all just hit each other and form one big star?"

"The white dwarf and the red giant are spinning around each other quite closely, but fast enough to stay separated. The brown dwarf is orbiting them both in a very elongated orbit, about three billion kilometres out at present…but during its three hundred year or so orbit it probably approaches as close as maybe one or two hundred million kilometres or so to the others, at a guess, as it circles around them," Sailor Pluto deduced, her senses perfectly capable of plotting the motions of the distant trio of giants that she had sensed. "That would also explain why there are no planets in that star system – the gravity of the brown dwarf would have disrupted their orbits and sent them into one or the other of the suns, or off into deep space eons ago."

"That doesn't sound too promising," Sailor Saturn said, her eyes dropping. "And are all the other stars around here like those ones?"

Sailor Pluto sighed in her mind. "Yes, very probably. And that makes sense, I guess. The presence of so many moving stars, so close to each other in this cluster must play gravitational havoc with any planets that may be circling them. When one star passes close to another, any planets orbiting either of them would have their paths badly disrupted. Big stars with stronger gravity would steal planets from smaller stars, other planets would have their orbits broken and spin off into deep space, and others would be sent crashing into either their own or into the intruding star. I doubt if there's many surviving planets at all anywhere near the center of this star cluster because the stars are packed so tightly together."

"So where are we going to go, Setsuna-mama? We can't stay here on this comet forever."

"My best guess would be for us to head in the opposite direction to the core of this star cluster, Hotaru-chan. The stars on the outer rim would be far more likely to harbor planets than the ones further in, for the reasons that I've just explained to you. The stars further out are our best bet because they are far more widely spaced, which means there's a lot less chance of any other sun coming close enough to them to disrupt their solar systems."

"So we sailor teleport that way, towards where there are only a few bright, isolated stars?"

"That's right," Pluto agreed, gesturing with her garnet rod. "We'll head towards the nearest star in that direction, that big blue, 'B' class one. I don't think it has any planets either, but at least it's towards the outer rim and in the direction of the galactic core which we have to somehow pass through to get back to Earth."

"Okay. I'm ready!" Hotaru declared bravely, her small chin up.

"Just remember to keep a tight hold on my hand, Hotaru-chan. Don't forget what I told you - if we get separated way out here in this alien Oort cloud, it might take us quite a while to find each other again."

Sailor Saturn took a deep breath and grasped Sailor Pluto's hand even more tightly. Then she nodded in readiness.

"Luckily, the stars here are so close together that we should only need one teleport to reach each new one – two jumps at the most," Pluto remarked. "All right, we're off!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

The sub-space jump brought both sailor scouts to within three hundred and fifty million kilometers of the hot, blue giant star, and it was just as well for them that they hadn't arrived any closer to their destination. So hot was the stellar furnace burning in front of the two lost sailor scouts that they could barely withstand the wall of heat beating into them from the blue-white inferno, despite the super radiant giant seeming to be only the size of a small marble from this still great distance away.

"_Sailor Pluto!"_ Hotaru cried out in terror as her usually space-proof sailor scout _fuku_ began to smolder in the withering waves of solar radiation. _"It's too hot!"_

"We're going to have to teleport again, _right now,"_ Sailor Pluto replied, gritting her teeth in pain, her gloved left hand raised up protectively in front of her eyes to shield them from that terrible barrage of heat. "I'll head towards the next star out! Hold on-!"

Their second jump was much more successful than the first. The two smoldering wanderers solidified back into normal space near another double star system – a 'G' Class star similar to the sun of Earth this time, only slightly larger. It was accompanied by a very dim and tiny red dwarf sun less than a third of the size of its primary, about a quarter of a light year away. Just to the left and above the faint, red pinprick of the red dwarf, burned the much brighter light of the blue monster that they had just fled from the vicinity of, almost two light years further out from their new location.

"Whew! That was close!" Pluto gasped out, clutching her garnet rod tightly against her chest with relief at their narrow escape from incineration. "From now on, I'm going to avoid taking us anywhere near those classes of hotter sun. They're just too dangerous."

"I second that," Saturn agreed, wiping her forehead with her free hand, shards of frozen sweat breaking off and floating away from her in a small shower of hail. "We almost got fried back there!"

"Well, we're much safer here, at any rate." Quickly, Sailor Pluto scanned the binary star in front of them. "We're in luck this time, Hotaru-chan. Both of these stars have planets! The yellow sun closest to us has at least eleven planets surrounding it, while that distant red dwarf star has three that I can sense, even from here."

"Eleven!" Hotaru enthused. "That's a lot, isn't it? Let me see if I can find them all as well."

"Yes, it is a lot, but I sense that two of these planets are actually just passing through this system – fortunately their paths are nowhere near the orbits of the indigenous planets here, so their passage should cause minimal gravitational disruption to the native worlds," Pluto elaborated. "I think that they were originally deep space wanderers, and both are still frozen right through to their cores for this reason. Chances are that both of them were also probably torn from their original orbits around their original suns by the gravitational fields of larger, passing stars."

"I can see them…I think…?"

"The most distant orbiting planet – a very small dwarf one, similar to my own world of Pluto, I think, was also probably captured from around another star – maybe even that red dwarf companion star? It's also on a very eccentric orbit, tilted at about forty degrees to the orbital inclination of the others."

"What about the remaining planets, then, Sailor Pluto? Can you tell if there are any here that look like Earth from this distance? I think that I can visualize one planet close to the yellow sun that seems to be mostly water?"

"You're right, Hotaru-chan, the second one out is a water world. It is orbiting at a distance of just over one hundred million miles from its sun," Pluto informed her. "Three more are big gas giants, there's one smaller gas giant, and also a small, high gravity brown dwarf star that – luckily for the other planets here! – is the closest one in to the central star. It's moving rapidly in a stable orbit at less than ten million miles out from the sun's surface - too close in to disrupt the stability of the orbits of the normal sized planets further out."

"But you said that there are eleven planets here, Setsuna-mama," Hotaru spoke up, her quick mind noticing a discrepancy in the tally. "Even counting the two wandering alien planets, you've still told me of only nine! What about the other two?"

"Yes, but those two are very strange in that they are both roughly the same size and are orbiting each other. They're the third and fourth planets out from the yellow star. And they are both so close to each other that they could even be sharing the same atmosphere…"

"_Oboy!_ That sounds really strange! Can we go and take a look, Sailor Pluto? Please? And can we check out the water world afterwards, too?"

Sailor Pluto laughed, pleased that Sailor Saturn was now being distracted from their desperate plight. "All right, we'll go," she agreed. "If nothing else, you can at least get a drink and have a swim on that water world."

"You have a swim, too, Sailor Pluto! If we're going to be lost in space for maybe forever, at least we can have some fun while we can."

"Oh, why not? You're right. We're not going to get home any faster by worrying about how to achieve it all of the time. We'll head for the double-planet first; it's by far the closest to us, anyway. Hold on-!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

The two lost sailor scouts flickered back into normal space near their unusual destination – to witness probably the most amazing sight that they had both ever seen, anywhere, and at any time. Even Sailor Pluto could not remember ever having seen a more awe-inspiring world than this one.

"_Would you just look at that, Hotaru-chan,"_ Sailor Pluto breathed out in wide-eyed astonishment, almost lost for words as she stared at the unbelievable sight that met her eyes. The two worlds that they had sensed were now hanging right there in space before them - so close to each other that they seemed to be almost touching! "I was right, they _do_ share an atmosphere… _Oh, wow!"_

"_Boy, they're close together,"_ Sailor Saturn gasped out, just as impressed as her mother. "They can't be more than a couple of hundred kilometers apart. Setsuna-mama, if you stood on one of them and looked upwards, you wouldn't see the sky at all! The whole sky would be filled by the surface of the other planet staring down at you!"

"_That's unbelievable…!"_

"Setsuna-mama? But how could a double planet like this possibly form? It couldn't really be natural, could it?"

"_Maybe._ You'll find, Hotaru-chan, that most things will have happened at least once, if you search for them for long enough."

"But I still don't understand why they don't collide. Is it for the same reason as the two stars we noticed before – the speed of their orbits around each other is fast enough to keep them apart?"

"Yes, that's correct, Hotaru-chan. Very good! And as to how this twin world formed, I suspect that this was originally one single planet about twice the size of Earth," Sailor Pluto guessed, forcing herself to think the amazing sight through. "Some colossal force must have somehow split the original planet in half and sped up its rotation, so that the pieces of the shattered world had enough orbital momentum to prevent them from merging back into one planet again. Instead, the gravitational field of each half was strong enough to squash the debris of each hemisphere back down into two separate, normally shaped worlds, and the remaining debris thrown further out reformed into that large moon over there that is orbiting these twin worlds… That's absolutely amazing, if it's true?"

"Is what you said even possible?" Hotaru gaped at her mother, eyes huge with shocked surprise.

"Obviously it is, and there's the evidence right there in front of us."

"_Wow!"_

"I've done a bit more scanning, and I've discovered another interesting fact about these twin worlds," Sailor Pluto continued, as Sailor Saturn continued to stare with rapt fascination at the unique sight. "Since both of these planets are approximately the same size and density, the gravitational tug of each one upon the other has caused them both to stop rotating around their equators. This means that both of these planets have their faces tidally locked to each other, so that the same area on their surfaces is always facing the other, just like the same area on the moon is always facing Earth. However, since each planet is still _orbiting _around the other like the blades of a spinning propeller, as well as orbiting around the yellow sun up ahead, both of these worlds still have cycles of day and night. Judging by what I can deduce from up here in orbit, the orbital period of each planet around the other in a complete circle seems to be just over fourteen hours, so the days here are a lot shorter than at home."

"_Hey, look! _There's the moon that you sensed earlier coming into view behind the right hand side planet!"

"Yes. And it's in quite a wide oval orbit around that binary planet, a bit further away than our moon is to Earth…but that's only to be expected in this situation."

"It's not as big as our moon, either," Sailor Saturn remarked, her eyes closed as she concentrated hard on the distant natural satellite as it slowly drifted into view. "It's maybe two-thirds as big…?"

"Yes, that's about right, I'd say. You're getting better with your senses already. Well, Hotaru-chan. Do you want to land on one of those two planets, or continue straight on to the water world you sensed orbiting further in?"

"Thanks for the compliment, Setsuna-mama. And let's go down," Hotaru told her excitedly. "The view of the sky from the surface of either planet down there is going to be awesome!"

Sailor Pluto laughed. "All right, but we'd best be careful where we land. If both of these planets didn't have their faces tidally locked to each other, we probably wouldn't even be able to set foot on either of them at all."

"Why is that, Sailor Pluto?" Sailor Saturn asked, her small brow frowning with puzzlement under her gold tiara.

"Because the colossal tidal forces caused by either one or both of these planets still rotating around their axis would cause both worlds to be seething masses of erupting lava, with super strong earthquakes, exploding volcanism like mini-solar flares and seas of magma, probably miles high, rushing across their surfaces, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto elaborated grimly. "That, indeed, must have been the case before their gravitational drag on each other caused the rotation of them both to slow down and to finally stop. Once that finally happened, over millions of years, their surfaces would have slowly settled down to a normal state and solidified into proper land."

Sailor Saturn shuddered. "That sounds a bit like Jupiter's moon, Io, in our own solar system. Io is a mass of volcanoes and lava, too, and that's caused by Io being so close to Jupiter's really big gravitational field, isn't it, Setsuna-mama?"

"Very good, Hotaru-chan. I see that you _have_ been paying attention in science class at your school, after all. Well, shall we teleport down to the surface of the nearest planet, or drift down slowly to enjoy the view from orbit?"

"Drift down, Mama! I wanna go in directly between the two planets to see what's there!"

"All right," Sailor Pluto grinned at her eagerness. "Let's break orbit and go."

As Sailor Saturn drifted excitedly onwards through the black void ahead of her, Sailor Pluto smiled at her young companion's boundless enthusiasm as she followed her much younger charge at a far slower pace.

_Boy, I wish that I still had Hotaru's energy. If I did, we'd both make it back home in half the time that it'll take us now!_

"_Setsuna-mama!"_

"What is it, Hotaru-chan?"

"There's something else here!" Hotaru called back excitedly to her second mother, pointing to a far distant point in space over the curved horizon of the nearest of the two rocky worlds. "Midway between the two planets. I'm not sure what it is, but it could be a small moon!"

"A small moon? _Between_ the two planets?" Sailor Pluto murmured, looking surprised as focused her own preternatural senses on the indicated location of space. "You're right, Hotaru-chan, I can sense it now myself. Okay…from what I can tell from here, the object seems to be several kilometers wide, so it could conceivably be a small captured asteroid. But since it's too small and far away for our eyes to pick it out yet, we'll need to physically see it to be sure of that."

"Okay, but how did it get there in the first place?" Hotaru wanted to know. "I can't sense the thing moving through space at all! It seems to be totally stationary."

"Hmmm? Maybe it approached too close to this double planet, got pulled into a stable orbit around one of them, and then had its velocity drained off by the pull of the twin planets' gravitational fields as it continually circled between them both," Sailor Pluto guessed. "Eventually the small asteroid would finally come to rest midway between the two worlds, permanently frozen in place. But the odds of something like that happening without the asteroid dropping down out of its slowing orbit to crash into one or the other of the two planets are almost infinitesimally small…"

"Just like the odds of these two big planets being so close together are," Hotaru enthused, bursting with curiosity at finding yet another miracle in this one sector of space. "I wanna go check it out first, before we go down to the nearest planet. Can we please, Mama?"

Sailor Pluto smiled again at her young charge. "Oh, why not?" She good-naturedly answered. "It's not as though we're in any hurry to keep any urgent appointments, now, are we."

"Yaaay! I love exploring! Let's go!"

"Hold your horses, Hotaru-chan. It'd take us quite a while to fly to that mystery object's location, so we'd best teleport there. Then we can fly down to one of the planets after that, and enjoy the view then. What do you say?"

"Yes, Mama," Sailor Saturn agreed, flying quickly back to Sailor Pluto, to grab her free hand and tug impatiently at it. "Good idea! Come on, _let's go!"_

Sheesh? _Teenagers?!_ "All right, all right! I'm teleporting us there right now!"

And with twin flashes of light, that was exactly what they did.

-:-:-:-:-:-

The banished pair of sailor senshi flickered back into normal space only a couple of kilometers above what they had guessed to be a wayward asteroid, trapped in place like a fly in a spider web by the combined gravitational fields of the two far mightier worlds it had dared to approach.

They were wrong. On several counts.

First, it wasn't the cold vacuum of space that had rematerialized back into. It was air. Non-breathable air at that altitude, but air, nonetheless. For, being in such frighteningly close proximity to each other, the twin planets did indeed share a single, all enveloping atmosphere that stretched in a several thousand kilometer wide circular column completely across the roughly three hundred kilometer distance between the worlds.

Secondly, while Sailor Pluto's guess at the trapped object being approximately two kilometers long was correct, an ordinary rock or nickel-iron asteroid it was not.

The huge object that the two travellers arrived above appeared to have the shape of a perfect sphere. Because such a comparatively small object couldn't possess nearly enough gravity to crush itself down into a globe, Sailor Pluto knew instantly that it was far too circular to be natural.

Unless, of course, the trapped object was made of super-dense compacted matter such as a neutron star, or the compressed, burnt out nucleus of a white dwarf star…!

As that terrifying thought crossed her mind, Sailor Pluto felt the cold hand of fear freeze her heart to its core. She had just realized that if this mysterious stationary sphere _was_ the remains of a collapsed star, she and Hotaru had just doomed themselves. They wouldn't even have a split second to teleport back out of the irresistible pull of its gravity well before crashing at meteor speed into the ultra-hard surface below them and be spread over the impact site in a twin smear that would be far less than the thickness of a single atom.

Luckily for their continued survival, nothing of the sort happened. No fearsome gravitational tug had snatched the hovering pair, to yank them violently downwards to their doom. Sailor Pluto calmed her hammering heart, realizing with a sense of overwhelming relief that they were in no danger from that particular type of cosmic horror – this time.

It was only then, after she had composed herself once again, that Pluto noticed the speckled patches of greenery splashed across the surface of the enigmatic globe. And, could those really be some bizarre form of _trees_ towering up for hundreds of meters into the world-spanning atmosphere, to form an almost unbroken forest of vegetation that completely blanketed the minuscule world…?

"Look, Mama, there's trees down there!" Hotaru yelled, waving her staff with excitement at the tiny planetoid, and using her voice to talk with in the thin, cold, _very_ high altitude air, instead of her telepathy. "That's absolutely amazing! Just look how tall they are. I wonder if there are animals down there, too?"

Without waiting for a reply, or even giving a thought as to her personal safety, the excited young sailor senshi began to drop down towards the forest-covered surface below them.

"_Stop, Hotaru-chan! Don't go running off on your own,"_ Sailor Pluto hurriedly called out to her young charge, immediately speeding off in the young teen's wake. "This construct is obviously artificial, and it may still be inhabited by its builders," she then warned her querulous companion. "We'd best stick together and be on our guard."

"Yes, mama," Hotaru answered, coming to a full stop again. "Sorry, I didn't think of that. But we're sailor senshi. Surely we don't have too much to worry about from anyone or anything that we may discover down there?"

"Maybe. But you never know, Hotaru-chan. And taking wise precautions never hurt anybody, did it?" Sailor Pluto pointed out.

"Okay. I'll be careful, Setsuna-mama. I promise."

"Good girl. All right, we'll go down now and do our exploring, _together."_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Down on the tiny world below them, hidden amongst the familiar looking, though totally alien trees, a large, dark gray shape raised its blunt snout up to the heavens, its banana-shaped, armored head cocked into a fair approximation of a listening pose. The thing had just sensed the approach of two strange, bipedal creatures, who were descending from the great void into its domain. With a loud, spine-chilling hiss, the sinister, insect-like creature scuttled away, moving swiftly into a black, circular tunnel that angled down into the detritus covered ground, the thing vanishing amongst the inky-black shadows within.

It had companions to warn.

Mere moments later, the trap had been set. All that remained now was for the two interlopers to spring it.


	2. Chapter 2

_Heyo! And here we go - Chapter Two. I've lots of other stories to write and update, so if you like this story, then let me know._

_If I get enough positive feedback, then I'll update it sooner. And there'll be __many more chapters to come!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER TWO**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

M-di-H'dlak the Yautja was edgy, and on this occasion the alien commander certainly had good reason for his uneasiness. He, the leader of this Yautja hunting party, and his companions hadn't even arrived at the world that was their destination yet, and already their planned training mission had met with an unanticipated glitch.

The lengthy flight though deep space from their home world of Yautja Prime to this particular distant solar system had gone smoothly enough. It was only now, on their final approach to Yaat, the double planet, that a totally unexpected problem had chosen to manifest itself.

To most spacefaring races who knew of its existence, the very existence of the double world of Yaat was itself an enigma. But not to the Yautja. They knew exactly how the twin planets looming up ahead of them had come into being – and just what was responsible for splitting the original solitary world into two totally separate new planets and the larger moon orbiting the pair, as well.

But not even the Yautja knew for what reason the original planet had been shattered and reformed into this bizarre configuration of worlds. However, they intended to find out, one way or the other – no matter how long it took for them to do so.

Millennia ago, after a brutal civil war, the cause of which had long ago been lost in the mists of time, the original unified Yautja race had split into a number of mutually hostile fractions, some of which had left the homeworld and gone their own way into the depths of interstellar space. What had been one people had now evolved into several slightly different subspecies. But there was one thing that that each Yautja variant all still had in common, though – apart from their obsessive, overriding thrill of the hunt, of personal combat, and of war, of course.

This one other shared quality was curiosity. Especially with regards to unresolved mysteries such as this one. Something profound was eventually going to happen here in the vicinity of this distant, little known binary world, and they intended to be here when it did.

So far, the Yautja had been waiting in vain. Not once had the nearly eternal and tirelessly vigilant watching machines they had originally left behind on the pock-marked surface of the large moon that orbited the twin worlds signaled their makers on Yautja Prime to come and witness a single event of any significance. Absolutely nothing of note had happened in the immediate vicinity of Yaat for a length of time exceeding the entirety of the Pleistocene Ice Ages on Earth.

But the Yautja races were patient. They could afford to wait for this baffling cosmic enigma to resolve itself. Besides, in the meantime they could always travel here every one hundred years or so to enjoy themselves with the thrill of the hunt on the artificial moonlet that was their destination, which was frozen forever in geo-synchronous orbit between the facing hemispheres of the opposing worlds.

As more than one of the Yautja races had been doing, almost without incident, for hundreds of thousands of years.

Only, on this trip, things were going to be very different for this latest in a long, _long_ series of hunting parties. For on this occasion, someone or something had arrived at the twin world of Yaat just before they did.

As the deep space Yautja starship had been making its final approach to the binary planet, the gap between the twin planets now rapidly expanding on every shipboard view screen as the spaceship followed its pre-programmed route to its destination, a proximity alarm had suddenly gone off in the control room. Instantly responding to the totally unexpected warning, M-di-H'dlak saw, to his astonishment, that the keen sensors of the vessel had picked up the unmistakable energy signature of a pair of advanced life forms somewhere directly ahead. The startled leader then immediately magnified the overhead screen above his seat to its maximum resolution, to espy the pixilated, luminous shapes of two bipedal creatures, both seemingly impervious to the rigors of the rarified atmosphere surrounding them, descending down onto the miniscule moon that was their apparent destination – and that of the yautja starship, as well. Even worse, the most unexpected and definitely unwanted interlopers were landing slap-bang in the middle of the intended area of operations for their hunting party!

Immediately, the dumbfounded M-di-H'dlak, his mandibiled mouth agape, slammed a nuggety fist onto the 'identify' touch pad of the _gkinmaru _(ship's sensors), activating a targeting laser rangefinder. This triangle of red light then automatically zeroed in on the distant forms of the intruders in exactly the same manner as the smaller version built into his helmet visor did when he hunted prey. As confirmation of the trespassers' species flashed up onto the screen in front of him a couple of seconds later, the eyes of the seven-and-a half-foot-tall alien widened even more, and his forehead wrinkled in disbelief. The unwanted intruders had apparently originated on a far distant world indeed – and a most unexpected one, at that.

According to the data held in the memory banks of his ship, the two beings now on the captured moonlet ahead of them were from the planet Earth. The world of the Oomans_._

_Oomans,_ _here? Impossible!_

M-di-H'dlak hissed, his mind now in turmoil. Something was badly wrong with this scenario. The Oomans should not – no, _could not_ - possibly be in this solar system. In fact, they had no right to be even in deep space at all, let alone on the opposite side of the vast galactic core to their mud ball of a homeworld…!

By dint of thousands of years of hunting expeditions to their primitive world, the Yautja knew for an irrefutable fact that Oomans had only very recently come to possess even the most rudimentary spacefaring technology imaginable. So there was no possible way that any representatives of their planet-bound species could have reached this far across the galaxy – at their current level of development, they could barely even make the infinitesimal hop through near space to the large moon orbiting their own world.

So – how had this unprecedented situation come to pass? Had the dangerous, unpredictable Oomans suddenly either fortuitously discovered or somehow come into possession – either by accident or the by the deliberate actions of some other extraterrestrial species - advanced technology capable of carrying them to the stars?

If so, then this was a disturbing – no, a frightening thought.

Oomans were tool folk like the Yautja. Their projectile weapons, whilst still comparatively primitive, could be disturbingly effective, as several recently deceased members of his species could have testified to, had they still been alive, that was. And every Ooman generation had seen further advances in their overall technological capability, which was now evolving at an unprecedented rate…

But it wasn't just their weapons that made the Oomans such dangerous prey. It was their native cunning, their inventiveness, their desperate courage when cornered and were left with no choice but to fight for their lives. Furthermore, many Oomans, both male and female, possessed a disturbing but admirable propensity to fight on against suicidal odds with whatever makeshift weapons they could lay their hands on, even if their cause was well and truly lost.

In many ways, the Oomans were very much like the Yautja themselves. His own species, of course, were superior to the Ooman race because they were far more honorable in conduct. Yautja – including in times of war – would go out of their way to avoid killing females and young of prey species, as well as the weak, the ill, and the unarmed. Oomans, on the other hand, were noted for their brutal savagery against all whom got in their way, whether said opponents were capable of defending themselves or not.

Which was exactly why their sudden expansion out into the galaxy was such a cause for grave concern. Especially since the unstable Oomans were known to now possess highly indiscriminate killing technology. That the Oomans had developed nuclear weapons was bad enough, but now they had gone even beyond that and developed both neutron and hydrogen bombs, as well!

M-di-H'dlak was a pack leader, with many, many successful hunts to his credit. Therefore he had the advantage of proven credibility. So when he relayed on to the leaders of his clan on Yautja Prime that the Oomans were now capable of leaving their planet and traversing the galaxy to this far distant sector of space, then the elders would surely listen and share his concern.

Once they had been alerted to the budding potential threat, the Yautja Elders would no-doubt first look and listen to gather further information, make their plans and then act. Advanced spacefaring technology in the hands of unstable Oomans was something that they could not afford to ignore for long.

And when the Yautja war machine returned to Earth to cut this new technological threat off at its source, as he knew they would have to sooner or later, for his own honor and greater glory, M-di-H'dlak fully intended to be in the vanguard of it.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Even as the Yautja ship activated its cloaking device, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn, as yet totally unaware that the hostile eyes of two different alien species were clandestinely observing them, were now only seconds away from landing on the small world.

After descending between the towering alien trees, the pair momentarily hovered above the leaf litter covered surface of the moon, and then touched down onto the spongy topsoil.

"Yaay! We're here," Hotaru cheered, gazing eagerly about her at the strange landscape surrounding them. _"Hey?_ This air on the surface is breathable, Mama, even if we weren't sailor senshi!" The teenager sucked in a deep breath of the chilly air, and then puffed it out in a cloud of swirling vapor to prove her point. _"See?"_

"You're right, Hotaru-chan. The air is much denser down here on the moon's surface than it is higher up between the twin planets," Pluto agreed with some surprise after also taking a deep, exploratory breath of the unexpectedly concentrated atmosphere. "Hmmm?" Her smooth brow furrowed momentarily in a thoughtful frown. "As to why," she then continued, "It is almost certainly due to the surprisingly strong gravity pull of this small moon – in fact, the gravity here seems to be almost as strong as it is on Earth! And since the air down here is actually breathable to ordinary people, those alien trees are obviously giving off oxygen in some quantity. Which means they must be using the process of photosynthesis to do so, just like the familiar trees back home."

"But a moon this small should barely have any gravity at all," Sailor Saturn protested, remembering back to her science lessons once again. "What's causing this strong gravity pull, Setsuna-mama?"

"I don't know, Hotaru-chan," Pluto admitted. "However, I do have a theory or two for you as to the possible reason why. You see, if this tiny moon really is artificial, like I suspect it is, it is just feasible that whomever or whatever built it could possibly have constructed it around an inner core of ultra-dense compacted matter, like that formed naturally inside a nova or supernova explosion. That would explain the unusually strong gravity here on the surface for an object of this size."

"But is that even possible, Mama? Wouldn't the extreme gravity just compress any added matter down into a new layer on its surface, and add to its gravitational pull?"

"Yes, and no, Hotaru-chan. Believe it or not, if the core of this moon really _is_ a small chunk of ultra-dense matter from an event such as a nova explosion, and if the builders have both a sufficiently high level of technology and are _very_ careful, it is perfectly possible to assemble an artificial moon to surround it. This is because the further away from the high-gee fragment you get, the less its gravitational pull on you is. However, to do so, the ultra-dense matter first has to be confined – by a powerful magnetic field, maybe – in the direct center of a hollow space at the moon's core. Then new layers of rock or other physical matter can be added around this hollow space to encase it, the sphere being built at a sufficient distance away from the heavy matter at its center for its gravitational tug to have been reduced to a tolerable level."

Hotaru's own brow wrinkled in a frown as she tried to get her mind around that concept. "So the gravity is much less on the outer crust of the moon than it is further down towards the ultra-dense matter at the moon's core? And that's why we haven't been crushed?"

"That's it, Hotaru-chan. You got it."

"I see? Hey, have you ever seen natural asteroids made up of heavy matter before, Mama?"

"Yes, once or twice before," Pluto recalled. "But not all of them are necessarily as dangerous as I've made them out to be, Hotaru-chan. It all depends on just how dense and heavy the compressed matter at the core of each asteroid is, and also its size. For example, some of them are made of medium-dense matter and have the gravitational pull of moon-sized objects, despite being only a few hundred meters in diameter. Such naturally occurring compacted star remnants drifting through space for thousands, even millions of years, in time build up a thick outer shell of conventional dust and rock, eventually forming a perfect sphere of compacted space debris. Just like normal moons and planets, they have enough gravity to attract other matter to them, but not enough to crush it down into more heavy matter. For this reason, these high-gravity fragments are safe to land on, and can only be distinguished from normal small asteroids or comet remnants by their perfectly circular shape."

"Just like the one we're now on! So, that being the case, is there any chance that we're standing on a naturally created piece of medium-dense matter right now, and not an artificial moon built around one?" Hotaru pressed her older companion. "Maybe we're worrying about nothing after all, Mama?"

"No, I don't think so, Hotaru-chan." Pluto cast a wary eye around their gloomy surroundings before continuing with her explanation. "The other reason that I think this small moon is artificial is because of this alien forest we're walking through right now. Logic tells me that vegetation on an asteroid this small has an almost zero chance of occurring naturally. So something must have put these plants here for a reason. That in turn leads me to the conclusion that the unknown beings responsible for designing or terraforming this planetoid might still have a presence here even now. So we'd best be on our guard, just in case."

"Oh? But we can still take a look around, can't we, Mama?"

"Yes, Hotaru-chan. Only we'll do it _carefully."_

Cautiously, the pair began to make their way though the tangled alien undergrowth. However, when Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn finally came to a halt after several minutes of weaving their tortuous way amongst the soaring tree trunks, not a single creature of any size had been glimpsed by the watchful sailor senshi along their line of march. In fact, the entire, eerily still forest seemed to be totally devoid of animate life of any kind.

"I can't see anything moving at all here, Setsuna-mama," Sailor Saturn declared, an undercurrent of disappointment in her tone as she looked around with interest at the silent and still woodland surrounds. "Or hear any animals, either. There's no birds here, no insects, _nothing_. I can't even feel any wind blowing. It's like we're trapped inside an endless, grey, 3-D photograph!"

"I'd be very surprised if there _were_ birds and insects here, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto replied, mentally smiling at Hotaru's imaginative analogy. "This is an alien planetoid, remember, hundreds of millions of light years away from our own solar system. Any animal life forms to be found this far out into deep space are sure to be totally different, physiologically at least, from those living back on Earth."

"But some of the trees look to be very similar to those back home," Sailor Saturn protested, gesturing at the sparse though towering forest that surrounded them. "Except the leaves on some of them are so dark that they're almost black, that is."

"These trees are most likely just an example of parallel evolution, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto explained. "Most life in the galaxy that I know of is carbon based – although there are a few exceptions to that rule. Nature usually works out the most efficient way of doing things. When it comes to vegetation – native to Earth or otherwise, photosynthesis is usually the most efficient method of energy capture and storage. All you need is carbon dioxide, sunlight and water, and the galaxy has plenty of these ingredients."

"But why are the leaves of these trees so black?" Hotaru wanted to know.

"For a good reason, Hotaru-chan. Simply put, black is the most efficient color for absorbing both light and heat. After all, it is fairly cold up here because of the altitude mid-way between those two planets. Furthermore, not much light reaches the plants growing here because both planets block out the light from the sun for extended periods of time as they orbit around this moon. So the forest plants here have to absorb as much solar radiation for both warmth and energy as fast as they can, when they can, hence the black leaves."

"Oh…? That makes sense-" Just then, Hotaru noticed something else of interest. "Mama, look!"

Despite being several hundred kilometers away from the facing surfaces of both companion planets, there was obviously a trace of water vapor even this far up in the high altitude air between the two tidally locked worlds. And because of the chill in the denser air, especially during the very frequent, regular as clockwork nights caused by the rotation of both worlds around the tiny planetoid, each in turn blocking out the sunlight for extended periods, some of this water vapor had cooled enough to condense into liquid water. The precious droplets were even now trickling down the cold stone face of the monolithic boulder that Hotaru was standing beside, to pool into a half filled hollow in the rock at her feet.

Hotaru stared eagerly at the tiny natural basin of crystal clear water, and then looked up to her mother.

"I'm really thirsty, and I can't sense anything wrong with this water, Setsuna-mama. What do you think? Is it is safe for me to drink?"

Sailor Pluto gave the icy cold pond a quick molecular scan with her mind, and then nodded her affirmation to her daughter's appeal.

"Yes, it's fine, Hotaru-chan. This water has hardly any impurities in it at all, and it's perfectly safe for you to drink. You go ahead and help yourself to as much of it as you want. I'll keep watch."

So the thirsty teen, with alacrity, did just that. As her young companion slaked her thirst, Sailor Pluto lifted upwards off the ground to hover protectively above the rocks, her garnet rod at the ready, all senses alert for the first sign of hidden danger.

As she watched her daughter drink, Pluto felt more than a tinge of worry once again at Hotaru's situation. Bad as though her own situation was, Hotaru's was ten times worse. For while the Sailor Senshi of Time could survive indefinitely in space without needing sustenance of any kind, food or drink, her companion could not.

Hopefully, locating drinkable water during their long journey back to Earth wouldn't be too much of a problem. Sailor Pluto knew from previous experience that water ice was reasonably plentiful even in deepest space. So, theoretically, all they had to do to get a drink was to locate either a comet or an icy asteroid, sailor-teleport onto its surface, and then melt enough of the deep-frozen water to satisfy Hotaru's thirst.

No, the real problem was finding enough edible food for the younger sailor senshi to manage to survive on – and that wasn't going to be easy.

As Pluto began to reflect on their plan to visit the water world she had sensed further sunwards, the prospect of doing so became more and more attractive. Millennia ago, explorers from the Moon Kingdom had voyaged far beyond the solar system of Earth, and had discovered one vitally important fact. Where there was a substantial amount of liquid water on a planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star, there was usually life of one sort or another to be found there as well. Hopefully, some of the creatures to be found in the alien ocean of the water world would be at the very least palatable…and there could even be edible fruits or other vegetation to be found along the shorelines of any emergent islands or other larger landmasses.

"Ah, that's much better, Setsuna-mama," Hotaru sighed in relief, wiping at her chin as she stood back up again, her voice bringing Sailor Pluto back to the here-and-now. "I'm not thirsty at all, now." Then a whimsical tone appeared in the young teen's voice as she added, "But I really wish that I could go without food and water at times like this, just like you can, Mama."

"So do I, Hotaru-chan," Pluto replied with feeling, knowing if that were the case, their millions of light years trip back to their home solar system would be so much easier to accomplish. "Very much so! Unfortunately you _do_ need to eat and drink, so there's no use in us worrying about things we can't change."

"Have you spotted any animals at all while I was drinking, Mama?"

"Not a single one. Except for this strange vegetation, it's looking more and more likely to me that this moon has no other life upon it at all."

"So it's safe for me to transform back into my normal self, Mama? Since there's no danger, I wanna feel what it's like to be here as a normal person. As Sailor Saturn, I can't even feel how cold it is, or anything!"

"I…can't see why not," Sailor Pluto reluctantly conceded. "But be careful! At the first sign of discomfort from the cold, or of any sort of danger, promise me that you'll change back into Sailor Saturn at once! And you've got to stay within sight of me at all times, Hotaru-chan. Agreed?"

"I will, Setsuna-mama. I promise," the teenager solemnly vowed, hand on heart.

"Okay. You have my permission."

"Yay!" Instantly Sailor Saturn was surrounding by a swirling nimbus of glowing energy. A sudden flash of light burst outwards from her glowing form, and as the bright light faded away, the slender form of Hotaru Tomoe the human girl, clad in a thick sweater, long pants and sandshoes, stood in Sailor Saturn's place.

"Brrrr!" Hotaru cried out with excitement, wrapping her arms tightly around her upper body and shivering deliciously at the sudden rushing sensation of cold enveloping her slim body. "It's pretty chilly here, Mama! I hope that I don't catch cold?"

"I don't sense any bacteria or viruses of any sort here, either, Hotaru-chan, so the prospect of that happening to you is very unlikely," Sailor Pluto wryly informed her young companion. "I'm much more worried about you contracting hypothermia from exposure to this freezing air. The temperature here must be near zero degrees Fahrenheit! It is just as well that your ensemble includes that woolen sweater, socks and shoes, or else you wouldn't be able to last very long here as you now are, at all."

"Yep! I'm always prepared for anything, Mama," Hotaru laughed as she stepped forward towards a gap between two fallen tree trunks, their intermingled branches bare and twisting above the two lost sailor senshi. The dead alien trees formed a grotesque, skeletal trellis across the all-encompassing skyscape, which was almost entirely comprised of a hemisphere of one of the twin planets, whose patchy brown, cratered surface was only a mere one hundred and fifty kilometers directly overhead. "And if I move about a bit more, the exercise will help me to warm up, too. So I'm gonna climb up onto this tree trunk and see if I can – _waaaah!"_

For a split-second, Sailor Pluto stared in horror at the ragged hole that had opened up in the leaf litter where Hotaru had been standing only an instant before. Then, her heart in her throat, she swooped down towards the still-crumbling mass of dead twigs and alien leaves that were dropping away and spiraling down the black shaft into which the young teen had vanished!

"_Hotaru-chaaan!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Whilst Hotaru had been enjoying her badly needed drink of fresh, ice-cold water, the cloaked Yautja ship had come in for a silent and unobserved landing on the far side of the moonlet. Fully protected from unwanted observation by its cloaking shields on its swift and silent approach, the starship had touched down safely below the curvature of the moon's very close, forest-clad horizon without being spotted or even suspected by the humans it was tracking.

Once safely down, M-di-H'dlak immediately led a party of two of the young, unblooded Yautja out into the frigid, still air of the minature world. All three were fully equipped for their task at hand. They would head straight towards where the two trespassing Oomans had previously been seen to land, and once on location, would seek to ascetain just what the two aliens' purpose for being here was.

M-di-H'dlak had _definitely_ not been expecting to find Oomans here, and upon doing so, had hurriedly revised the weapons load that he and his scouting party would be carrying. After all, where there were two dangerously unpredictable Oomans, there could be more. So, instead of just the usual personal cloaking device, plasmacaster, wrist blades, and dagger that was carried on a normal hunt, his two trainees were now also burdened with combi-sticks and net guns. M-di-H'dlak, being an experienced warrior, usually disdained the use of energy weapons on training hunts, even _Kainde Amedha_ – hard meat xenomorph - hunts such as the one they were now on. But in this case, he wisely also equipped himself with a plasmacaster. Unlike Xenomorphs, Oomans were toolfolk, and could shoot back.

The remaining young Yautja trainee hunters were chafing at the bit to come along as well, but M-di-H'dlak left them behind in the ship, under the command of his second-in-command, Guan-thei-de. 'Night Death', was a veteran warrior, too, as was the ship's pilot, Kujhade. 'Destroyer' and 'Night Death' would easily keep the overeager youngsters under firm control. And in the unlikely event that reinforcements were needed, M-di-H'dlak figured that the impatient horde of snot-noses could be brought up quickly enough.

In the meantime, he certainly didn't need the full hunting party of ten trainees, two adjucants and himself falling all over themselves to capture or kill the mere two _Pyode Amedha_ - soft meat Oomans - they had so far spotted!

-:-:-:-:-:-

As the ground dropped away beneath her sandshoe-covered feet, Hotaru was caught totally unawares. Before the shocked teen could even think about trying to save herself, she was plummeting down into the dark, vertical hole beneath her, a shower of dead leaves and twigs raining down all around her! Then, with a sudden flash of pain, her head struck a glancing blow on a rock protruding from one wall of the shaft. For a split-second, dancing red stars filled Hotaru's stunned mind, then blackness engulfed her as she passed out.

Luckily for Hotaru, the hole she had fallen into was less than ten meters deep. Even better, a thick pile of previously fallen vegetation lay heaped up at its base, protecting her unconscious body as she thumped down hard upon its spongy surface. Bouncing once from the impact, the senseless teenager then slowly slid down one side of the heaped up detritus, to finally come to a stop with her head and shoulders resting on the floor of a horizontally set underground tunnel. A flat-sided, square shaped tunnel that Hotaru would have instantly recognized as being artificial had she at that moment been capable of viewing it.

This mysterious passageway stretched away into the darkness on both sides of the pool of dim light emanating from the shaft in the ceiling, its ancient rock walls replete with strange carvings etched into them by whatever enigmatic race had built it. In the exact center of this beam of faint light was the ragged pile of black foliage and the slender body of the unconscious Hotaru Tomoe, laying totally motionless where she had fallen.

For a few seconds, with the exception of a few fluttering stragglers of the mass of plant material that had fallen into the pit with the unlucky teen, nothing else stirred. Amongst the pitch-black shadows behind the regularly spaced rectangular pillars and crossbeams of what looked to be hardwood, which served to brace the nearly totally dark visible expanse of the strange tunnel, all was quiet and still.

Until a huge, almost black thing detached itself from a pool of inky-darkness behind a crossbeam on the ceiling, to then scuttle down the nearest wall and across the detritus-strewn floor to Hotaru's side. For a second or two, the scorpion-like creature glared down at the senseless teen with its eyeless, curved head, as if pondering whether to strike at her motionless body with its twin rows of razor-sharp teeth, or not.

But – luckily for Hotaru - nothing of the sort eventuated. Once it became obvious that its intended prey was incapable of offering any resistance, the thing lashed its segmented, whip-like tail, then abruptly scooped up the limp girl and vanished with her into the stygian blackness that marked the location of a nearby junction in the dimly lit tunnel.

-:-:-:-:-:-

"_Dammit!"_ Sailor Pluto cursed out loud, staring with dismay down into the deep pit in the surface of the forested moonlet into which her adopted daughter had plummeted. "I never should have let her change back! _Hotaru, hang on! I'm coming down after you!"_

_I can't sailor-teleport down after her – I've no idea just what I'm jumping into_, she then thought, biting at her bottom lip with understandable anxiety for the welfare of her now totally human companion._ And that pit looks to be pretty narrow. I'll just have to do this the hard way._

Grimly, Pluto raised up her garnet rod, and then pointed the jeweled end of it down at the gaping, rough-edged hole below her feet.

"_Chronos disintegrator."_

Instantly, the orb-shaped garnet jewel set near the end of her staff was engulfed in a perfectly spherical, shimmering ball of what looked to be heat waves. However, in reality the flickering, perfectly transparent sphere was a localized area of sped-up time. Inside the meter-wide bubble surrounding the red jewel, the flow of time was being accelerated at an incredible rate.

And, as she drifted downwards into the shaft with her key-shaped staff now held in a vertical position with the garnet-orb end well below her feet, the reason for Sailor Pluto's action in summoning this particular power immediately became obvious. As the rippling ball of speeded-up time came into contact with the rock sides of the narrow fissure, the sudden passing of thousands of years upon the bare stone proved to be a very efficient disintegrator of it, instantly eroding the unlucky matter away into less than dust.

Less than ten seconds later, Sailor Pluto warily touched lightly down upon the heaped up mound of assorted plant material and debris at the base of the hole, her garnet rod now held at the ready in a defensive position. However, that wise precaution proved to be unnecessary, as the tunnel into which she had unexpectedly descended proved to be totally empty of both her missing daughter and any lurking potential foes.

Once those facts became clear to her, Pluto first canceled the matter disintegrator field from the end of the garnet rod. Then she spared a quick, instinctive glance up into the now perfectly circular, meter wide tubular shaft that led up to the not-all-that-distant surface of the moonlet, before dropping her worried gaze once again to subject her immediate surroundings to a much more thorough scrutiny.

'_Phew!' Thank goodness this hole isn't nearly as deep as I feared it would be,_ Pluto told herself with a great sense of relief as she took in the horizontal tunnel that stretched away into the darkness on both sides of her tense and wary form. _And, judging by those carvings, this tunnel is definitely artificial. But Hotaru's not here! Where could she have gotten to in this short amount of time…?_

_Still, she can't have gotten far. And she should still be in earshot, so-!_

"_Hotaru! Where are you?"_ the anxious Outer Senshi leader loudly called out, both audibly and telepathically. _"I'm down here at the base of the shaft! Yell out if you can hear me, and I'll come to you!"_

But her only reply was the booming echo of her own voice as it reverberated back from some far distant wall, hidden from view in the depths of the pitch-black tunnel.

"So much for _that_ idea," Pluto groaned out loud, both exasperation and a trace of worry in her voice at the baffling lack of response from her missing companion. "_'Sigh!'_ All right, it's the hard way again, I suppose?"

"But on the bright side, the good news is that I know wherever Hotaru is right now, at least she's still alive," she then reminded herself, drawing reassurance from that one definitely known positive fact. "Hotaru can't be dead, because I'd sense her death the instant it were to happen."

"All right-!"

The Sailor Scout of Time then closed her red eyes and began to concentrate on the vital task at hand, her mind's eye reaching out to make contact with her missing daughter –

- With nearly instantaneous success!

"Found her! She's only a couple of hundred meters away, moving away from me at high speed down a side tunnel," Pluto enthused, reopening her eyes as a wide grin of heartfelt relief replaced her previously somber expression. "But why is Hotaru running in that direction? Maybe she thinks that's the way out of here? Whatever the reason, I'd best go after her right away!"

_But – just for a second, I thought that I sensed something else down in this complex of tunnels, as well as Hotaru and I_, the older girl mused, a slight frown on her forehead as she hurried off in the direction that her companion had vanished in. _Maybe even more than one? I'd best be on my guard from now on. And the sooner I catch up to Hotaru, the better I'm going to like it!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Sorry about the wait, guys! Without further ado:_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER THREE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Only a few seconds after the apprehensive Sailor Pluto had moved off along the tunnel in the direction that Hotaru had inexplicably vanished down, further trouble arrived. Back up on the surface of the miniscule moonlet, a trio of huge, ghostlike figures abruptly appeared, seemingly out of thin air, at the rim of the access shaft she had created to facilitate her descent. The three transparent apparitions were now staring down into the smooth-sided tube that the taller of the two Ooman interlopers they were tracking had somehow drilled into the solid rock, and then disappeared into.

Less than two minutes ago, only seconds after the unsuspecting Hotaru Tomoe had plummeted helplessly through the leaf litter into the concealed pit beneath her feet, the three cloaked yautja of the advance scouting party had arrived unnoticed on the scene. Even as the nearly totally invisible trio watched from the cover of the weird forest, the tallest of the pair of Oomans they had been seeking - now alone and noticeably agitated for some unknown reason - had raised and activated what was obviously a staff weapon of some kind. Next second, the thermal image of the long-haired Ooman – whom to his surprise, M-di-H'dlak abruptly realized was actually a female of that species - was dropping feet first down into a pre-existing vertical shaft in the moonlet's outer crust. The narrow hole that her activated weapon was in the process of _enlarging_, the energy ball at its tip easily dissolving away the solid rock to a width of several _nok_ as she made her rapid descent into the ground and out of their astonished sight!

Even as he waved his two companions forward, deep in M-di-H'dlak's alien mind, a nagging, half-formed memory was surfacing to torment his thoughts. His sudden sense of uneasy _deja-vu_ seemed to be related to the distinctive garb that the Ooman female was wearing – he was sure that he had seen its like before. _But where…?_

_And when?_

M-di-H'dlak didn't like mysteries – especially unexpected ones such as this particular example, which had the very real potential to adversely affect the successful completion of his hunting expedition. So, just whom the strangely attired and unquestionably out-of-place Ooman female was, or represented, _definitely_ required an answer, and as soon as possible. However, the mystery of her identity was one that _would_ be solved by him, just as soon as he could get back to his ship and upload the images from his helmet _g__kinmara_ into the onboard memory banks. Of that, he had no doubts whatsoever.

"The Oomans have rashly ventured down into the _Kainde Amedha_ lair," one of his trainees declared, breaking into his leader's thoughts. "Are they both _l'ulij-bpe_? They will die – and not by our hands, curse the luck!" And M-di-H'dlak couldn't help but notice the disappointment in the tone of the younger Yautja as the youngster made his pronouncement.

"Maybe the puny Oomans are not mad, but are hunting the hard meat, also?" the second unblooded stripling pointed out, by his eager demeanor also obviously chafing at the bit to track down and dispatch the two alien interlopers forthwith, and then take their heads as the very rare and highly prized trophies that they were sure to be. "The bigger one could be an experienced hunter training the smaller?" he continued. "If that is so, we should pursue and hunt them both _and _the _Kainde Amedha,_ right now!"

"We shall kill them all, Oomans and _Kainde Amedha,_ and heap much honor upon the three of us," the disembodied voice of Trainee Number One boasted, brandishing his combi-stick, in full and enthusiastic agreement with what his fellow student had just said.

"I have heard that some Oomans do hunt other creatures for sport, even as we do," M-di-H'dlak told them, deciding to impart much needed wisdom to his two inexperienced and overeager charges. Besides that, he had noticed something about the two Oomans that his companions obviously had not. "But I suspect that is not the case with the two we have discovered here. The larger one was an Ooman female, and the smaller was probably her offspring. I think that what happened here was that the smaller one fell down that hole, and the larger one is trying to rescue it."

"_A female?"_ the first underling gasped, his mandibles behind his breath mask wide with astonishment. "But…but the Earth creature has a weapon, we all saw her use it to bore into the ground! So that Ooman must be either a hunter or a warrior of some sort-!"

"And even if the Ooman we saw _is_ female, if she is also an armed hunter or warrior, then she is fair game for us," the second trainee loudly pointed out to his leader and companion, hoping his statement as to the profession of their prospective prey really _was_ true, as he knew all-too-well that it was against the Yautja Code to kill even an armed female if she was acting in defence of her offspring. "But for her to enter the _Kainde Amedha _hive alone? You are wrong, she _is_ _l'ulij-bpe!"_

"True to your first point. But, as to whether she is as mad as you say she is, I think not. And I am not so sure that the larger Ooman is as she at first appears to be, either," M-di-H'dlak told the shimmering outlines of his students, once again feeling strangely uneasy at what he had observed. And with that, the yautja leader made a snap decision on what their plan of action would now be.

"I am going back to the ship to gather information from our database on what I now suspect about these strange, out-of-place Oomans," he declared. "I will return soon. You two stay here as _Hult'ah_ (sentries). Remain cloaked and watch your backs. Kill any _Kainde Amedha_ that come near you, but remain in the vicinity of this hole until I have returned."

"What if the _Kainde Amedha_ spot you on your way back, and attack you in force?" Student Number One untactfully inquired, not overly pleased at being relegated to sentry duty when there was prospective prey to be hunted right now in the subterranean tunnels at no great distance underfoot.

"Then the _Kainde Amedha_ who try will all die!" M-di-H'dlak snapped back to the impudent stripling, somewhat offended at the implication that he was incapable of defending himself without their help. "As will _you,_ if you don't pay attention to what I have told you to do!"

"Yes, Leader," the pair hurriedly chorused, their tall, ghostlike forms snapping to respectful attention, before turning and fading back off into the nearby undergrowth. They both knew better than to argue with a veteran warrior like M-di-H'dlak – to do so could be downright bad for their heath, and in some cases, even fatal.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Even as the trio of yautja dispersed on their respective tasks, one half of their hoped-for Ooman prey was carefully moving deeper and deeper into the stygian underworld beneath the surface of the unnatural planetoid. With all due caution, Sailor Pluto made her way along the shafts and tunnels hewn through the natural rock, her path clearly illuminated by the soft red light now being cast by the glowing-red gem on her garnet rod.

Less than five minutes after setting out on Hotaru's trail, the worried foster mother stepped out of the narrow and twisting tunnel she had been following into a second, much larger and obviously artificial corridor. However, instead of following a straight course as the first hallway had done, this one curved in a gentle and regular fashion away to both the left and right of her position. Even as she assumed an on-guard stance once again, Sailor Pluto noticed with interest that the walls and ceiling of this new tunnel were covered in the same weird carvings and raised outlines of symbols that she had seen in the previous one.

But there was one other immediately noticeable difference between this newly discovered tunnel and the one that she had first dropped into. The walls, floor and roof of this particular hallway were all made of an unknown, dark grey metal. This passageway hadn't just been hewn through the solid rock of the moonlet's outer crust, as the first one had been. It had been designed and built as a part of something else.

And the entrance she had just come through – upon closer inspection, Sailor Pluto realized that the jagged hole had been blasted through the thick metallic wall, from the outside-in, by a violent explosion sometime far back in the dim and distant past!

_? What is this place? And why am I feeling a sudden chill in my bones? I…don't like this place at all…!_

Inside the alien hallway, the air was frigid and dusty. But nothing was visibly stirring in here, either, and the only sound that the tense sailor senshi could hear was the steady _plop-plop-plop_ of water droplets falling from some hidden crevice amongst the inky-black shadows in the connecting tunnel behind her.

'_Phew!' So far, so good. I'd best find Hotaru-chan as fast as I can, and then we can get the heck out of here!_

Warily, Sailor Pluto followed the hallway in the direction that she sensed that Hotaru had gone, until it opened up into a much larger open space. And then she froze in mid-step, her heart in her throat.

Lying totally motionless near the centre of the open space was the dead body of _something_.

_Something huge_.

Whatever the bizarre-looking giant was, it certainly hadn't been even remotely human. But it had definitely been an intelligent life form of some sort – the withered remains of the garment that still covered a good percentage of its eight-meter long, mummified-looking body bore mute testament to that. And judging by the thick layer of dust blanketing the huge, trunked thing, it had been dead for eons – possibly thousands, maybe even as long as a million years.

And what could possibly have caused the chest of such a massive creature to burst open like that? Sailor Pluto wondered. Even after all of this elapsed time since the demise of the alien, she could still see that the creature seemed to have exploded from the inside out.

Another shiver ran up Pluto's back and she involuntarily clutched her garnet rod a little tighter as she turned away from the ancient, dusty corpse of the fallen titan. After subjecting the rest of the room to a careful scrutiny, she continued warily on her way across the dome shaped room.

Once she had entered the opposing hallway, Sailor Pluto paused momentarily and then reached out with her mind's eye for a second time, seeking to re-locate her missing daughter. And as contact was made with Hotaru's still puzzlingly unresponsive mind, she realized with some relief that the girl was no longer moving directly away from her. In fact, the wayward teen seemed to have come to a halt at long last, and at no great distance away from her present position, either.

The fly in the ointment, now, was that the new location of the hapless girl she was seeking was somewhere deep below the floor of the tunnel she was now standing in.

_Damn! _Pluto muttered under her breath as she began to look around for a means to access the lower level that must obviously exist below the one she was on. _I'm going to have to go even further down into this bizarre moon to reach her. And there could be a whole series of other subterranean levels and corridors down there for us both to get lost in. So much for a quick in-and-out rescue!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Deep underground, in their sprawling nest, the main body of the _Kainde Amedha_ horde were at this very moment stirring themselves into action as they dimly sensed the presence of approaching intruders.

With the exception of a few lookouts stationed semi-permanently on the forested surface of the moonlet, the vast majority of the nightmarish creatures had been in hibernation for a long, long time. In fact, it had been almost exactly one hundred earth years since they had last awakened, _en masse_. However, their numbers weren't static. The headcount of Xenomorph drones in the hive was slowly increasing, and in a most unusual manner, at that.

Because the tidally-locked facing surfaces of the two planets that the tiny moon was trapped between were so frighteningly close to each other, at their closest point, the gravity field of each earth-sized world was almost completely canceled out by the almost-as-strong gravitational tug from its opposite. So, at or within a radius of almost one hundred kilometers of the epicenter of these two practically zero-gravity regions, if a creature could manage to achieve a velocity of as little as two meters per second whilst jumping straight upwards, it was actually possible to leap from world-to-world, in both directions, through the almost two thousand kilometer in diameter column of air that connected the twin planets.

And several species of creatures inhabiting this low gravity region that spanned the gap between the twin planets, did indeed, on occasion, manage to safely make the vertiginous, three hundred kilometer journey – in both directions - through the thin and chilly connecting atmosphere to the opposing world that hung in perpetuality directly overhead. Furthermore, even one or two species of comparatively large, non-flying life forms were perfectly capable of making the trip.

And, as to just how these almost unbelievable occurrences could come about…

In the almost zero gravity regions on both facing hemispheres, kilometer high alien trees soared into the air like skyscrapers, as if reaching out with twisting woody fingers to grasp the forever unreachable surface of their opposite. And from these natural towers, the occasional individual or group of one large species of long-legged treehopper, in particular, would occasionally launch itself skyward just a little too vigorously for its own good. If the hopper then managed to miss latching onto its leafy destination in the branches above it, the hapless creature would continue on into the air-filled void, to eventually splash down into the almost identical forest on the surface of the facing planet.

This hair-raising interplanetary journey, however, had three very real risks to the creature making the attempt. Firstly, the further away from the epicentre of the low gravity area one went, the greater the gravitational pull of the world it was on became, until, right on the boundary, gravity had increased back to its normal strength. So, if the set path of the traveller were to send it too far towards the edge of the low gravity region, the steadily increasing gravitational tug of the curved hemisphere below it would rapidly become far stronger than the also-decreasing, counteracting pull from the other planet. When this happened, the straight-as-an-arrow course of the unlucky hopper would turn into a parabolic arc, and it would then plummet back down at an ever-increasing speed towards the surface of the planet it happened to be the closest to at the time, before impacting in a fatality-inducing smear against whatever solid obstruction its hurtling body encountered first.

Secondly, should the angle of the traversing creature's jump take it outside the aways-fluctuating outer edge of the tunnel of thin, though breathable air that linked the opposing planetary hemispheres, the result would be equally fatal to it. Right around the entire circumference of the life-sustaining tube, where the upwelling atmospheres of the twin planets touched the sub-zero void of open space, the remaining water vapor that hadn't already precipitated out as rain in the thin, cold, high altitude air, would instantly freeze. Then, because of the higher gravity this far away from the center of the world-connecting air bridge, all of these newly formed particles of ice would fall away in twin, glowing, twinkling, all-encompassing cylindrical curtains of hail and snow back down towards their worlds of origin. Like the endless conveyor belt of billions of swirling water molecules were continuously doing, the doomed treehopper would also freeze solid once it encountered open space, whilst simultaneously suffocating in the airless void. Then the unlucky creature would fall like a meteor through the snowflake-filled downdraft that ringed the upwelling tunnel of air, back down into the upper atmosphere of the planet it was nearest to at the time.

Thirdly, every once in a while, the usually fixed trajectory of one or two of the world-jumping hoppers would take them into the surprisingly strong gravitational field of the trapped moonlet. When this happened, the unlucky creature would be pulled off its interplanetary course, sending it on a one-way and usually survivable trip down onto the moon's forested surface.

Where the _Kainde Amedha_ would be waiting.

And so the numbers of the xenomorphs slowly increased over the long decades, until the span of approximately one hundred earth years had gone by once again.

And then the yautja would return for the hunt once more, as they had done since time immemorial.

After the bloodletting was over, the usually – although not always - victorious yautja would make sure to leave one or two _Kainde Amedha_ alive on the moonlet, to start the whole cycle all over again.

And if the _Kainde Amedha_ won the bloody contest, as they had indeed done on several, very rare occasions-?

The next yautja hunting party to arrive would either salvage the marooned spaceship of the lost expedition, or implode it if it was too badly damaged to save, or otherwise incapable of flight for any other reason. Then they would descend into the maze of tunnels below the surface of the moon, to do battle with the waiting _Kainde Amedha_ horde and avenge their fallen comrades.

All in all, it was great sport, and one that the yautja relished. So, the physical competition amongst the younger, inexperienced yautja students on their homeworlds to be picked for the once-per-century expedition to the Yaat hunting ground was, quite understandably, fierce – and for some of them, the tryouts were occasionally fatal.

-:-:-:-:-:-

As she inched her way along the subterranean tunnel she was currently following, Sailor Pluto knew none of this, of course. But she did now know that there was something else down here with her and Hotaru. And the thing – or things – she could dimly sense flittering around in the blackness all around her were definitely malevolent. Of that, she had no doubt at all.

_Oh, crap! Oh, crap! I have to get out of this tunnel, right now!_

At the end of her garnet rod, the Chronos disintegrator pulsed back into life. Just as she began to lower it downwards, with the intention of boring her way down with all due haste to the next level below her, the sudden, shocking click of metal on stone sounded to her immediate rear!

Whirling about in fright, Pluto whipped her garnet rod back up to the on-guard position – just as she spotted a pair of jagged wrist blades appearing out of thin air, stabbing with blinding speed directly towards her curvaceous chest!

Deftly, Pluto intercepted the surprise attack with the transparent ball of the Chronos disintegrator field – and only just in the nick of time! As the lethal blades sweeping downwards entered the shimmering ball of accelerated time, they _didn't _dissolve away into nothingness, as they should have done. But the cumulative effect of thousands of years of erosion compressed into a single second served to blunt the cutting edges of the razor-sharp, ultra-hard blades enough to prevent them from slicing the top off her garnet rod as they thumped into its shaft, the force of the impact nearly knocking her weapon talisman from her adrenalin-stiffened hands.

As she staggered backwards from the sheer power of the unexpected blow, Sailor Pluto looked up with wide-eyed shock as, nearly a full meter above her head, two greenish eyes momentarily flashed – and it was only then that she became aware of the monstrous, transparent shadow standing right there next to her!

Fortunately for Sailor Pluto, her fighting instincts took over. And unfortunately for her overconfident ambusher, in her sailor senshi form, Sailor Pluto was several orders of magnitude stronger than a normal human female. So the backhanded swing of the key-shaped base of her garnet rod to the blurry outline of her towering attacker's helmeted head took the thing totally by surprise. Furthermore, the power behind her counterstrike knocked the cloaked yautja clean off his clawed feet, to send him skidding backwards down the tunnel for a full ten meters before his over three-hundred-pound weight finally bought him to a grating stop.

For a couple of seconds, the young predator just lay there, flat on his back in the swirling cloud of dust, his mandibled mouth agape with astonishment behind his breath mask at what had just so unexpectedly happened to him at the hands of a creature less than half his size. Nowhere in the records he had read had it stated that Oomans were _this_ strong! The powerful blow he had been dealt hadn't hurt him physically; the only injury he had suffered was his bruised ego – which made the young predator feel ten times worse than any mere flesh wound inflicted on him would have done.

_Pauk! A mere Ooman female has decked me! The ignominy!_

"_Raaaaaghh!"_

Leaping back to his feet with a roar of outrage, the yautja trainee charged forward to the attack once again, his clawed feet thumping heavily on the dust coated floor of the tunnel. Such was his fury and eagerness to get to immediate grips with the miniscule prey that had humiliated him; the young predator recklessly disregarded everything he had learned in basic training about how to act in a situation such as this one. Nor did he even give so much as a thought to his shoulder mounted plasmacaster, or even the long, lethal combi-stick that was still strapped to his back.

And this was to be his undoing.

"_Dead Scream."_

Between the sheer size of her translucent target and the cramped confines of the narrow hallway, there was no way that the vastly more battle-experienced Sailor Pluto could miss at such a short range as this. Pirouetting, she launched her primary attack – a purplish, glowing ball of concentrated sonic energy – directly into the massive chest of her nearly invisible assailant, blowing the thing backwards once again.

After the reverberation of the thunderous explosion had faded away, Sailor Pluto hurriedly rolled back up from the floor onto her own feet again, her garnet rod once more at the ready.

However, her precautionary measure proved to be unnecessary. The nearly seven-foot-tall, brown-and-yellow-mottled body of her stupidly rash attacker lay totally motionless in the swirling cloud of ages old dust, luminous green blood from its destroyed chest splattered all over the walls and floor of the corridor like a galaxy of green stars. The creature itself was now fully visible to her fear-filled gaze, the blast having obviously destroyed whatever device it was that had rendered the alien invisible in the first place.

And from the now exposed face of the thing, the huge-eyed sailor senshi abruptly recognized to just what species the giant creature she had just successfully defeated, belonged. And as she did, all of the remaining color drained from her face at that instant, as well.

"Yautja!" Pluto whispered, her heart thumping in her chest as she instinctively dropped down upon one knee in a ready pose, her body once again protectively shielded behind the rippling ball of the Chronos disintegrator field. "This has to be one of them…! Oh – _hell."_

_This is bad. I've heard of the Yautja before, and I've seen what they can do. If they are here, right now, then they must be on a hunt! And that means…those other things that I can faintly sense out there in these tunnels are almost certainly-? _

_Oh, crap! I've got to find Hotaru, and get her away from here, before it's too late! I just pray it isn't that, already-?_

-:-:-:-:-:-

M-di-H'dlak had made the short return trip back to his still cloaked starship without incident. Once inside the massive vessel, he had immediately dispatched the bulk of the hunting party, under the command of Guan-thei-de, to join up with the two sentries he had left to guard the access shaft that the mysterious female Ooman had dropped down. And now, accompanied by the pilot, Kujhade, at the computer inside the control room, the yautja leader had already found in the onboard data banks the information he had been seeking.

Finding out just who the taller of the two beings he now had to deal with was had been remarkably easy. After transferring the images and data his helmet scanners had automatically recorded of the green-haired human female into the main memory banks, the required data, written in yautja script, had come up on the screen after only a few seconds – flagged with a large, flashing, warning symbol!

Yellow eyes wide with surprise, the yautja leader quickly scanned the summary:

_LIFE FORM GENERIC NAME__: Sailor Soldier or variant thereof (aka Sailor: Warrior, Senshi, Planetary Guardian, Scout, Defender)_

_SPECIES CLASSIFICATION__: __Humanoid__ (__NOTE__: Sailor Soldier __gender__ always __female__ of humanoid species)_

_STAR SYSTEM OF ORIGIN__: Numerous (see __here__ for known list)_

_PLANET OF ORIGIN__: Numerous (see __here__ for known list)_

_KNOWN PHYSICAL ABILITIES__: Enhanced physical strength and durability, various others (See __here__ for comprehensive list)_

_KNOWN PARAPHYSICAL ABILITIES__: Various (see __here__ for comprehensive list)_

…_Further data pending…_

_Searching Sailor Soldier database for visual and biological data match…_

…_Searching…_

_Exact match found. Loading…_

"A sailor senshi?" he muttered, _"Here? _But what's this-?_"_

It was just then, to M-di-H'dlak's even greater surprise, the ship's supercomputer flashed up a data file on the very Ooman he had observed, discovered in an old record that had originally been input thousands of years ago!

The predator leader's yellow eyes widened even more as he skimmed through the glowing red script under the rotating, three-dimensional image of the female in question:

_NAME OF ENTITY__: Sailor Pluto_

_ALSO KNOWN AS__: Princess Pluto, Guardian of the Underworld, and Guardian of Time._

_GROUP AFFILIATION__: __Sailor Soldier_

_TEAM AFFILIATION__: __Outer Senshi__ of __Sol__ system_

_ENTITY CLASS RANKING__: '__I'_

_SPECIES__: __Humanoid__ female_

_SUBSPECIES__: __Lunarian__ (Presumed extinct) from the time period known as the '__Silver Millennium__.'_

_STAR SYSTEM OF ORIGIN__: __Sol__ (For spatial co-ordinates, see __here__)._

_PLANET OF ORIGIN__: __Pluto_

_CLASSIFICATION OF PLANET OF ORIGIN__: Kuiper Belt Icy Dwarf; see __here__ for definition and further information_

_CURRENT PLANET OF RESIDENCE: __Earth_

_CLASSIFICATION OF EARTH__: Habitable Zone Rocky Inner Terrestrial; see __here__ for further information_

_PHYSICAL AGE OF ENTITY__: Variable (true age unknown)_

_KNOWN PHYSICAL ABILITIES__: Enhanced physical strength and durability, resistance to extreme heat and cold, ability to survive without food or drink, ability to survive unprotected outside planetary atmospheres, unaffected by all normal levels of nuclear, solar and cosmic radiation, capable of unaided atmospheric and space flight up to near light-speed_

_KNOWN PARAPHYSICAL ABILITIES__: space/time manipulation, time travel, teleportation, levitation, various others (see __here__ for comprehensive list)_

_ESTIMATED COMBAT EXPERIENCE OF ENTITY__: __Expert__ ranking_

_KNOWN WEAPON OF CHOICE__: __Garnet Rod_

_PRIMARY OFFENSIVE ATTACK: __Hypersonic__ '__Dead Scream'_

_PRIMARY DEFENSE:__ '__Garnet Ball'__ Force Field_

_PREY TROPHY RANKING__: Grade B++ (Superior hunting and combat skills required by no less than three or more very experienced hunters for an estimated 50% chance of a successful kill)_

_WARNING__: Oldest offspring of __Chronos, __God of Time_

_KNOWN THREAT LEVEL: __ACUTE.__ Upon sighting of this entity, extreme caution is advised._

_IMPORTANT NOTE__: Because of the power level of Sailor Pluto, the Code of Conduct regarding obligatory one-on-one single combat can honorably be suspended in her case._

_RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION UPON SIGHTING__: If possible, avoid all contact with this entity. Do not engage unless three or more blooded hunters of veteran ranking or higher are present and can achieve total tactical surprise._

_DOWNLOAD DATA INTO HELMET DATABASE? __Yes__/__No_

"_Pauk! Yes!"_

…_Download Completed._

After hurriedly unplugging his helmet from the control panel, M-di-H'dlak whirled about to face his subordinate. "Kujhade! Warn the others of the danger they are in, and order them to converge on the location of my transponder signal! Then prepare this ship for an immediate takeoff, should such become necessary."

"It will be done," came the reassuring reply from the most competent pilot.

Ten seconds later, the yautja leader was once more outside the vast, invisible bulk of his ship, and he had hit the ground running.

Only one thought was now on M-di-H'dlak's mind as he bounded through the undergrowth in the direction of the shaft where he had left his two trainees. Now that his hunting party had a very real possibility of engaging prey of _this_ magnitude, he wanted to be right there on the spot, if-and-when the attempt was made! M-di-H'dlak just hoped that the two young idiots he had left on sentry duty had obeyed his command to stay put, and hadn't gone off hunting the overwhelmingly powerful demi-god Ooman female on their own initiative.

If they had, M-di-H'dlak knew, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that the inexperienced snot-noses – even as well armed as both were - wouldn't stand a chance!


	4. Chapter 4

_Greetings, all. I'm finally on holiday, so it's update time at long last._

_I hope to get more writing and editing done now that I've caught up with my assignments, so expect a faster update this time around._

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR ****MOON: ****BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER **__**FOUR**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Meanwhile, the yautja leader's most desired potential prey was on the move once again, this time at a much more rapid pace than before. As Sailor Pluto, now almost frantic with worry, raced through the lower level towards where she could feel Hotaru's unconscious presence, she suddenly came upon a second obviously deceased creature, this one lying in the center of the pitch black hallway, directly in her path. Taking no chances, she skidded to a halt, and instantly lowered the business end of her Garnet Rod so that its illuminated tip was pointed directly at the motionless body ahead of her. Only then did Pluto inch warily forward for a closer look at the armored, insect-like thing that was barring her way.

"_Ick!_ It looks a bit like a giant cockroach," the green haired young woman muttered under her breath, momentarily grimacing at what she was seeing, now that she had gotten close enough to the corpse to take note of its unpleasant features. "I _hate_ cockroaches!"

On first impressions, the six-legged, almost two-meter long insectoid creature did, indeed, bear a likeness to that particularly disgusting earth species, although upon closer scrutiny, the wary sailor senshi saw that it actually bore a closer resemblance to a giant grasshopper or cricket. But, whatever it was, the thing had the exact same type of fatal injury as the first corpse she had found – a shattered chest that looked like it had exploded from the inside.

_What's going on here?_ Sailor Pluto silently wondered, her forehead creasing with puzzlement as she stared down at the dead alien, its chitinous cadaver now clearly illuminated in the red glow from her artifact's garnet crystal. _This thing is a totally different species to that first huge creature that I found. And, by the looks of it, I don't think that this big insect, or whatever it is, was an intelligent life form, at all. In fact, I'd bet that it's an animal of some kind…_

_But, if that's so, then how did this creature get here in the first place?_ _Hotaru and I have seen no sign of any other animals at all on this small moonlet, let alone something this size._ _I guess that it's feasible that the yautja brought it here to hunt, instead of their usual prey? No…this insect-thing must have been a xenomorph host because its chest is burst open! No other explanation for that injury makes any sense._

_But one thing is perfectly clear to me, now - it's far too dangerous for me to continue stumbling around here in these hallways, with the yautja and the xenomorphs and maybe even more of these things lurking around. I've got to get to Hotaru, and I've got to do it right away!_

Pluto sucked in a deep breath, and then, for once, a curse passed her lips. "_Dammit! _I know what I have to do to get to her. It's a risky course of action for me to take in these narrow, confined spaces, especially since I have no idea at all of the layout of this place. But now that I've pinpointed Hotaru's exact location below me, I figure that I've got no choice but to go for it…and hope that I don't reappear half inside a wall!"

Pluto then closed her eyes, concentrating intensely as her locator sense zoomed in once again on the bio-energy that marked the location of her missing daughter. Once she was absolutely sure that she could pinpoint her re-materialization point to within a couple of meters of her luckily still motionless companion, she raised up her garnet rod, and whispered:

"Sailor Teleport!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

To the yautja leader's satisfaction, and it must be admitted, no little surprise, upon his arrival back at the shaft that the Ooman female had disappeared down, he had discovered that both members of his scouting party had stayed put and were still guarding its entrance, exactly as he had ordered them to do. Knowing all-too-well of the impulsive nature of young, unblooded yautja, without either himself or one of the other two senior hunters on site to keep an eye on them, M-di-H'dlak had half-expected at least one of the impatient, overly-reckless pair to have succumbed to temptation and slipped away in his absence for a private little hunt of his own. He also knew that, under these dangerously unpredictable circumstances, such an act of disobedience would have almost certainly have proven to be a fatal lapse of judgment for the individual concerned.

One did not enter a _Kainde __Amedha_ hive alone, and return alive. _Ever._

Not to mention that the cunning xenomorph horde and their horrific leader would then have received advance warning of the presence of the yautja hunting party on the moonlet, dashing his plan for a surprise assault on their deeply buried, underground hive. So any trainee yautja under his command who did embark on such a foolish act would deserve everything he got at their hands.

- Or _his_ hands, if the offender was stupid enough to somehow return alive after committing such folly!

After breathing out a silent hiss of relief at both sentries still being on station, M-di-H'dlak turned back to face the silent ranks of now uncloaked, warily watching hunters standing at attention to his rear, his gesture to the two guards sending them to join up with their companions, the pair also deactivating their own personal camouflage screens as they did so. Such was the speed M-di-H'dlak had been travelling at on his return journey; he had overtaken Guan-thei-de and the rest of the hunting party at about the halfway point to the access shaft, and so they had all arrived back on location in a single group. Having already been warned by the pilot, Kujhade, as per his orders, of the unprecedented level of danger to their mission posed by the larger of the two Ooman females that had trespassed onto their hunting ground, every trainee member of the yautja expedition was now on high alert – and bubbling with _ch__'__hkt-a_ (excitement and anticipation), even more than they had been before this latest surprise revelation.

To their credit, there was definitely no _syuit-de_ (cowards) here, in this carefully chosen pack of top grade students. And this is what every young, aspiring yautja hunter lived for – the thrill and danger of the pursuit. The greater the challenge, the better – and with at least one sailor senshi now on site, the mission they had fought so hard to be accepted on now promised to be a doozy.

Quickly the yautja leader gave his orders to his fully armored, masked and equipped band of _very_ eager headhunters. They were still going to be entering the _kainde __amedha_ nest as planned, however, now the expedition was to advance fully cloaked at all times, and with maximum caution. M-di-H'dlak then emphasized that - the presence of Sailor Pluto notwithstanding - the xenomorph queen was still their priority target, and her protective xenomorph drones' the secondary ones.

And as to why - this was a mandated training hunt, after all. He and the other senior yautja were here for a sacred purpose – to train the unblooded in the ways of the hunt. M-di-H'dlak and Guan-thei-de already had many drone heads decorating their personal trophy walls, but to the eager, unblooded trainees, these deadly and unpredictable guards assumed an importance even beyond their actual trophy value, which was considerable to begin with. For any yautja student, to personally kill a _kainde __amedha_ on their first real hunt would be the making of the individual concerned. Doing so would ensure – if the act had been witnessed and if he survived until the hunt's end - that the victorious youngster would at long last be entitled to receive, from the Hunt Master, the mark of a Blooded hunter etched in acidic xenomorph blood onto his worthy forehead.

But if an opportunity to ambush the out-of-place sailor senshi who had appeared so unexpectedly on their hunting ground was to fortuitously come up, nothing in hunt rules prohibited them taking out such valuable targets of opportunity. So M-di-H'dlak definitely intended to do just that, personally, and dispatch her forthwith - if that was indeed possible for him to do with the limited forces and weaponry he had at his immediate disposal.

Like his students, M-di-H'dlak possessed a great deal of personal ambition. The chance to take the heads of both a _kainde __amedha _queen and a demi-god sailor senshi in a single day was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him. And the power and prestige he would then receive from his peers for accomplishing such a feat would ensure his place in yautja hunting lore long after he finally succumbed to Betanu, the Black Hunter (The yautja God of Death), as all must some day. For, no matter how mighty the warrior, no yautja had yet managed to conquer death himself. Death came for _all_. And whether he struck you down during honorable combat or through extreme old age, in a few seconds from now or in a hundred years time, Betanu _always_ won in the end.

Unlike his overconfident students, however, the yautja leader's drive for even higher social standing that he already possessed had been tempered by the wisdom gained from long experience, both on the hunt and in war. So, instead of rushing headlong into immediate battle with such formidable adversaries as the Alien Queen and Sailor Pluto, as his students were liable to do without strict supervision, he possessed the patience to stand back, watch and plan, then choose the exact right moment to make his move. Guan-thei-de could be relied on to do the same.

A combination of surprise and teamwork was what would win this day for them, against the _kainde __amedha_ and the sailor senshi. That and M-di-H'dlak's ace-in-the-hole, Kujhade and the covering fire from the main armament on board their starship, should the subterranean hunt go badly and the survivors be forced back to the forested surface of the tiny world.

However, fleeing from the moonlet back into the safety of space was definitely _not_ an option for the yautja, should they indeed be defeated in battle by the xenomorph horde or the trespassing sailor senshi. Such a display of cowardice was anathema to the yautja mind. They would either win the coming conflict, or they would all die trying in the process. Only in this way would their honor be preserved.

His orders given, and satisfied that he had given his students both a workable battle plan and sage advice that - if followed - should ensure at least _some_ of them would survive the coming carnage, M-di-H'dlak gestured again. Instantly, the armored, green-skinned, yellowish-brown and black patterned giants lined up before him began to dissolve away into invisibility once more, turning and moving off in a single line towards the access shaft that led to the interior levels af the moonlet and their blood-soaked destiny.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Only a couple of minutes prior to Sailor Pluto's discovery of the deceased giant insect, deep in the hidden depths of the moonlet, Hotaru had at long-last awoken from her prolonged episode of unconsciousness.

_Oww-Wowtch__…__!_ The young teen thought, grimacing at the sudden stab of pain that shot through her head as her eyes flickered open. After blinking and squinting for a few more seconds in an effort to clear the fog from her confused mind, she then raised up her head to scrutinize her immediate surroundings, which, luckily, were being faintly illuminated by some undeterminable light source high above and behind her. _What __happened __to __me? __And __where __am __I__ – __oh?_

To her shock and dismay, Hotaru then discovered that she was almost totally cocooned in some resinous substance – trapped like a fly in solidified amber, and half-imbedded in a wall that seemed to be totally comprised of the stuff. Still partially dazed from the blow to her head that she had sustained, Hotaru instinctively began to struggle against her molded restraints, but the strange, organic-looking material easily resisted all of her increasingly frantic efforts to free herself from its cement-like embrace. After a few moments, Hotaru finally ceased her futile attempts, and her head slumped wearily down, steam swirling from her panting mouth and beads of perspiration dotting her smooth forehead from the intensity of her fruitless struggle.

_Darn it all! I'm well and truly stuck in this stuff! And my arms are trapped, so I can't reach my Henshin stick and change into Sailor Saturn,_ the ensnared girl realized, her heart hammering with apprehension at her frightening predicament_. So I can't escape that way, and since I'm only Hotaru Tomoe at the moment, I can't use telepathy or my sailor communicator to call Setsuna-mama for help, either! Oh, no…what am I going to do…?_

_But…how did I even get into this situation in the first place? The last thing that I remember was falling down a deep hole, and then…nothing._

_I must have banged my head during the fall, and landed in this gluey stuff while it was still wet, or something? And if things weren't bad enough for me already, it's cold down here! If Mama doesn't find me soon, I'll end up freezing to death – oh, gosh! What's that?_

The badly frightened, shivering teen had finally noticed that right there in front of her, no more than a couple of meters away, was a large, leprous-green-colored ellipsoid. The leathery, slimy-looking object seemed to be about two and a half feet tall, with a four-lobed opening across its top, and to Hotaru's wary eyes, it resembled nothing so much as a rancid type of plant bud. But even as she watched, the lobes began to unfold like flower petals, and then, to her shock, the rounded head of _something_ rose up above the rim of what was obviously an obscene alien egg of some sort! After questing back and forth with a scuttling motion for a few seconds as if to take its bearings, the eyeless face of the emerging, cat-sized arthropod suddenly turned in her direction – and it immediately stopped moving. And it was right then that Hotaru realized, with an almost electric jolt to her already pounding heart, that she was now in mortal peril!

_Oh, __help!_ _It __knows __that __I__'__m __here! __And __I __can__'__t __get __away!_

"_Mama!__"_ she screamed, trying to flinch away from the segmented thing that was now crouching down like a coiling spring on the top of the repulsive alien egg it had just hatched from, the young senshi knowing all-too-well that something really bad was about to happen to her.

In a blur of motion, the scorpion-like creature leapt for her face – just as the terrified Hotaru's eyes suddenly flamed with white light. Instantly, a protective force field of purple energy flashed out of her trapped body, the energy arc incinerating the leaping horror in mid-jump, and the alien egg as well, wiping both completely from existence, leaving not even a dust speck behind to dance in the thin, frigid air!

-:-:-:-:-:-

Pluto's micro-teleport was good. She rematerialized with pinpoint accuracy exactly where she was hoping to end up – within a couple of meters of her now _definitely_ wide-awake, panicky-looking daughter. Unfortunately, that selfsame location was smack-bang in the center of what was obviously a large xenomorph hive – the lava flow-like secretions that surrounded them both on all sides could be nothing else but that!

"_Setsuna-mama!__"_ the shivering Hotaru screamed out, her eyes huge with both relief and joy at the sudden and most timely appearance of her mother. _"__Where __am __I? __What__'__s __happening?__"_

"Hotaru-chan, thank god! Change back to Sailor Saturn, right now!" Pluto yelled back, her own tone also one of overwhelming relief that her daughter so far seemed to be unharmed. "I'll protect you while you transform!"

"I can't! My arms are stuck and I can't reach my Henshin stick!"

"Here." Quickly Pluto tore away the secreted restraints entrapping her daughter's slender body, as if the substance were made of nothing more substantial than paper. "I'll explain it all to you later, Hotaru-chan. But right now we've got to get the heck out of here, before-!"

"_Hsssssss__…__!__"__  
_

-:-:-:-:-:-

By now, the yautja hunting party, travelling in a tight, defensive formation, had made their silent way down into the pitch-black network of artificial tunnels that honeycombed this particular area of the outer crust of the small moon. So far, to the satisfaction of the hunt master and his adjutant, and, conversely, the huge - though wisely unspoken - disappointment of his young warriors, no xenomorph drones had been encountered at all on their journey towards the now not-all-that-distant hive that was their destination.

The hunt master was pleased at their swift and unnoticed progress, but at the same time, puzzled at the complete absence of _Kainde __Amedha_ sightings by his keyed-up trainees. By all rights, this close to the hive, they should have encountered at least one xenomorph drone by now. Could it be that something had drawn the expected guards away from the access tunnels – the sailor senshi, maybe-?

Just then, one of the two advance scouts, who had been situated twenty _nok_ ahead of the main party to give advance warning of any lurking threats on their line of advance, arrived back to report. The pair had made an alarming discovery, one of such import that it drove all other considerations out of M-di-H'dlak's mind for the nonce.

There was a dead yautja blocking their path, lying in a pool of its own luminous blood!

Hurriedly moving forward to where the body lay, the shocked and disbelieving M-di-H'dlak immediately realized that this deceased individual had been killed by a powerful explosion of some sort – and not all that long ago, either! This corpse was definitely a fresh one; the glowing green droplets still dripping from the clearly visible blast-pattern on the carved walls and ceiling of the hallway left no doubts about that, at all.

But…this was impossible! This certainly wasn't one of his trainees lying there before them – after all, the two that he had left on guard duty had both been waiting for his arrival back at the entrance to the shaft, albeit in a somewhat surly frame of mind, just as he had instructed them to do. And none of the other students had slipped away from the group – of that he was sure. Everyone was present and accounted for!

Furthermore, the second most likely explanation that had immediately leapt to mind to explain the presence of the corpse could be disregarded as well. His was the only hunting expedition that had embarked from their homeworld for this isolated solar system. M-di-H'dlak was absolutely sure of that fact, having made sure to check that vital information out beforehand. No other members of his race were supposed to be within dozens of light years of the double planet of Yaat. So how did this deceased member of his species manage to get here in the first place? And who could he have possibly been-?

And then, from the oddly different skin coloration and markings on the sprawled out body, M-di-H'dlak abruptly recognized just who the strange, out-of-place yautja corpse was, and also what its presence here signified. A split-second later, his helmet _gkinmaru_ confirmed his astute deduction with a warning tone and a flood of tactical data.

Normal yautja skin color was usually one or more of several very similar shades of dark green. And each individual member of their subspecies was stippled with a uniquely random pattern of yellowish blotches, black spots and patterns on their tough hides.

The visible skin on this body was a brownish coloration, mottled with yellow patches and markings!

_C'jit! __That__'__s __a __Hish __unblooded __novice!_

_We aren't alone on this planetoid! The Hish are here, right now, to hunt the Kainde Amedha, just as we are!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

M-di-H'dlak was right to be concerned at this second, also totally unanticipated turn of events. And with good reason. For most of the yautja subspecies didn't actually hit it off very well with each other. And most unplanned meetings between the rival branches of the race in situations such as this one were prone to turn very violent, very quickly.

The Hish were a good case in point. Their particular branch of the yautja race had been one of the very first to have split from the original yautja racial stock. This parting of the ways had occurred many, many millions of years ago, right back in the early days of interstellar travel. Because spacefaring technology had been far more primitive way back then, accidents had been far more frequent, and many of the earliest yautja interstellar starships had been lost without trace in the vastness of the galaxy.

The Hish were almost certainly the descendants of the survivors of one of these long-lost colony ships. As were the other divergent sub-races of the yautja, such as the Kee, and maybe the crashed colony ship theory even held true to explain the origins of the almost three-meter tall Red Super-Predators, the most dangerous family branch of all. This was not to say that the mighty yautja race actually _feared_ the Red Super-Predators. Far from it, in fact. The yautja feared no other intelligent race, subspecies or not. Rather, they afforded their larger cousins a healthy respect for their undoubted prowess, an attitude reinforced by the centuries of conflict between the two now only very distantly related clans.

Even though the true origins of the Hish had been lost in the dim and distant past, the yautja were actually correct with their speculation as to how the Hish subspecies had come into being. The particular archaic starship carrying the distant ancestors of whom would eventually become the Hish had indeed, in almost prehistoric times, crashed on a far-flung, and at the time, totally unknown swampy world, one quite unlike the hot desert world of Yautja Prime from whence they had originally departed. So, over the intervening millions of years between then and now, divergent evolution from the racial norm had shaped not only their bodies, but also their coloration to match their new, much muddier and wetter habitat.

Apart from the different color of their skin, the Hish differed from the original Yautja stock in two other very noticeable ways. Firstly, theirs was a female-dominated society, and not just because their clan leaders were always of the so-called 'fairer sex'. No, Hish females had evolved to be larger, stronger and more vicious than the males of their subspecies – unlike with his own race, on their original homeworld of Yautja Prime, where the exact opposite still held true.

Secondly, Hish were intensely territorial – not just in regards to their own steamy, mist and cloud-covered hothouse world, but also all of their 'game preserve' worlds that they had discovered, conquered, or adapted to their needs. These they had stocked with diverse prey suitable for the hunt – like the yautja, the more dangerous the game species, the better. And once they had laid claim to a planet or habitable moon – whether newly discovered by them, or not – the Hish would first conquer it, and then defend their new territory against all comers – which included all other yautja subspecies, including his own.

As he reflected on their suddenly dire situation, the yautja leader felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was bad. About as bad as it could possibly get. Now he and his greenhorn trainees had not only the vicious and unpredictable _Kainde __Amedha_ and the wildcard Oomans to deal with, they also had a well-armed party of rival hunters on location as well – hunters who would have absolutely no qualms about adding yautja heads to their trophy altars!

Just as _he_ would add Hish heads to his own trophy altar, given half a chance…!

And just to give M-di-H'dlak something else to worry about, he now strongly suspected that the trespassing Hish almost certainly already knew that his own yautja hunting party had landed on this moonlet. Aboard their own concealed starship, hidden somewhere in the thick jungle on this tiny moon, the keen sensors of the Hish ship could very possibly have picked up and tracked the approach and descent to its present location of his own starship, even though it had been cloaked against discovery by the two intruding Oomans at the time…

And if the no-doubt well-armed Hish ship were to suddenly attack and destroy his currently grounded vessel, which was totally unsuspecting of the danger it was now in-?

"_Pauk!__"_

Hurriedly breaking radio silence because of the gravity of the situation, the yautja leader sent an urgent coded message back to Kujhade on their mother ship.

_Remain cloaked, but prepare for imminent aerial attack! Activate the defensive shields at once! Full power to the main and secondary armaments, set all threat gkinmaru to maximum range and sensitivity, then get off this planetoid back into open space! Further instructions to follow._

As of now, none of the normal hunt codes and restrictions applied, and once he had received acknowledgement of his orders from the now equally grim-sounding ship's pilot, M-di-H'dlak then made that vital fact perfectly clear to all of his subordinates. This wasn't a hunt, as such, any more. This would be a war. A war against multiple, _very _dangerous opponents from three totally different enemy species.

The gloves were off. And it was at this moment that the alarmed hunt master fervently wished his tenderfoot, suckling-faced novices were all currently armed with full-sized burner rifles and were wearing the _Awu__'__asa_ (full body armor) that was stored on board their starship in case of emergencies such as this one. The half-armor and plasmacasters each trainee presently wore was sufficient for normal xenomorph and ooman hunting, which was all this expedition was supposed to have been when they had departed their ship. But these light hunting weapons would now in-all-probability prove to be woefully inadequate in a shooting match against the sure to be well-armed Hish – unless they, too, were equipped only for the hunt?

Maybe the Hish detachment _was_ only carrying energy weapons of similar power to those possessed by his students…?

…The Hish corpse on the floor in front of him was definitely armed with nothing more threatening than a plasmacaster, a net gun, and bladed hunting weapons, after all…

_We __can __but __hope__…__! __And __I__'__ve __wasted __enough __time __here __already!_

M-di-H'dlak let out a grunt of determination, and then gave the hand signal to recommence their cautious advance.

Time to get this all over and done with.

One way or another.

But, no matter what the final result of the coming four-way battle turned out to be, the yautja leader was determined that yautja honor – _his __own_ honor - _would_ be satisfied. His trainees were spoiling for a fight, and they were sure to give a good account of themselves against both the Hish and the _Kainde __Amedha._ Maybe even against the sailor senshi, too. But if things went badly for the yautja force and the Hish were to ultimately be the victors this day, because of the bloody swathe he intended to cut through their ranks, they, at least, would remember his name and his deeds. Of that, M-di-H'dlak had no doubts at all.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Back on the grounded yautja starship, Kujhade had leapt into action even as he was still receiving his instructions from M-di-H'dlak; his clawed fingers stabbing at touch pads and touch screens with the speed and precision gained through long experience. His urgent task of getting off the planetoid was helped immensely by two important facts; one, he had already run through all of the pre-flight checks because of M-di-H'dlak's prior order to do so, and two; this wasn't the usual, massive, interstellar cruiser-class vessel he was currently piloting. To the contrary, the ship he was at the helm of was a mid-size, long-range scout ship, specifically designed to take yautja hunting parties great distances in the shortest possible amount of time. Consequently, a great deal of the onboard functions, including the landing and takeoff cycles, as well as hostile target tracking and weapons engagement were all fully automated, making it possible for only one trained and qualified yautja pilot to single-handedly operate the still considerable-sized vessel.

In less than five seconds the deflector shields were up; the weapons were charging, and ten seconds after this, the engines were online and powering up for takeoff. After one quick glance to check that the threat board was still clear, Kujhade punched the automatic launch button the instant that the engine status graphic redlined on his control panel. Instantly, the cloaked and all-but-completely-invisible ship was lifting off from the alien forest in a whirlwind of dust, shredded leaves and branches, gaining speed with every passing second as it streaked through the thin, high altitude air towards the blackness of space. And to his great relief, no hostile burner bolts were following him up from anywhere on the visible face of the planetoid he was departing.

As the small, stationary moonlet rapidly receded away behind him; Kujhade spared a glance at the forward _gkinmaru_ screen, and then frowned thoughtfully at what he _wasn__'__t_ seeing. He now had a mystery to solve, and doing so in a hurry was vital to not only his continued survival, but also that of the yautja hunting party below.

This class of scout ship was equipped with the latest and best sensor package that could be purchased on _any_ yautja world - and, as far as his race were aware, any Hish world, as well. Such was the sensitivity of the esoteric devices mounted on his vessel, they were capable of instantly collating petabytes of incoming data from the various types of scanning sensors, and then projecting in real time on the main screen a 360-degree representation of nearby space and all it contained – including the deduced location of any fully cloaked and hidden spaceships in the vicinity - out to almost interplanetary distances. So, if a Hish starship or landing craft was indeed hidden on the strangely circular planetoid below - or anywhere else in near space, for that matter - the _gkinmaru_ should have been able to locate it, even if it was situated on the far side of the tiny world he had just launched from.

So why was nothing showing up on the 3-D screen? The grim-faced Kujhade knew that it was virtually impossible to block every last trace of energy and signal leakage from an interstellar starship of any size, no matter how good its cloaking system might be. So, if there was indeed a Hish ship anywhere at all near Yaat at this moment in time, the _gkinmaru_ should be picking up some sign of its presence by now. Yet the screen remained stubbornly blank. Where could it have gone? Could the enemy starship have already departed this solar system for some unknown reason, leaving their own hunting party behind-?

And then, only seconds after the yautja starship had passed through the outer rim of the world-connecting tube of air into the true vacuum of space, the intensely concentrating pilot spotted his elusive quarry! With a loud, electronic humming sound, the red-lit targeting triangle on the big screen in front of him abruptly zoomed in on a point of space that was well beyond the two facing hemispheres of the worlds that his own ship was still sandwiched between. The moving red triangle swiftly settled over and outlined the neon-lit representation of a Hish warship that was slowly emerging from behind the left-side northern region of the large moon that orbited the twin planets, itself just then coming into view beyond the narrow gap that separated its much more massive parents.

Kujhade hissed with satisfaction at the fortuitous discovery of his opponent. No doubt, the hostile ship had been busy destroying the watching devices that the yautja had left in remote antiquity on the distant, much larger moon's heavily cratered surface. However, to Kujhade's chagrin, judging by the size of the blip on the forward _gkinmaru _holo-display and the scrolling data stream being displayed next to it, unlike his ship, the uncloaked and consequentially fully visible Hish vessel _was_ an interstellar cruiser, a military class one at that, a full quarter of a kilometer long, and no-doubt containing hundreds – if not thousands – of their very aggressive subspecies. The situation for the yautja expedition was even worse than M-di-H'dlak had imagined it to be!

The one saving grace of Kujhade's precarious situation was that, so far, the Hish warship still seemed totally oblivious to the presence of his own much smaller cloaked vessel. And then, in a blinding flash of insight, the pilot abruptly realized the reason why this must be so.

By sheer, dumb luck, the Hish cruiser had been on the far side of the larger moon at the time of the yautja ship's arrival on location from deep space – and also when the sailor senshi had made their totally unexpected appearance between the twin worlds of Yaat only moments before this. So the separate landings of both disparate parties on the forested moonlet between the tidally-locked worlds had gone totally unnoticed by the enemy, because the Hish sensors had been blocked by not only the bulk of the distant moon they were behind, but also the mass of at least one of the full-sized planets that the tiny moonlet was trapped between. Likewise, the yautja sensors and the paranormal senses of the sailor senshi had failed to register the presence of the Hish vessel for the exact same reason. Which meant that the much larger enemy warship was right now sailing along serenely in plain sight for the simple reason that they hadn't realized yet that either the yautja or the Oomans were even there!

_Lucky!_

In light of this revelation, the presence of the Hish hunting party on the moonlet, who must have been on location well before the yautja expedition and the sailor senshi had even arrived on the scene, could easily be explained. No-doubt, upon its arrival in this remote and little known solar system, the probing sensors of the Hish warship would have quickly discovered the twin, earth-sized worlds of Yaat. The unique configuration of the nearly touching planets was certainly curiosity-inducing enough to warrant further investigation by the exploration vessel. And once in close proximity to Yaat, the scanners on board the huge starship would have first detected the trapped moonlet, and then the presence of the xenomorph horde beneath its heavily wooded surface. Such a tempting target of opportunity could not be ignored, so the Hish leaders on board the cruiser would certainly have sent down a hurriedly organized hunting party to stalk the _Kainde __Amedha_ in their underground hive…yes, everything fitted the facts nicely.

But why hadn't the Hish ship remained on station until the hunting party had finished their work? Kujhade had the answer to that poser, too. It must have been only after the Hish hunters had departed that the cruiser's _gkinmaru_ had finally picked up the faint electronic signals that the yautja watching devices on the orbiting outer moon were continually emitting into space. Being descended from the yautja, and possessing a similar level of technology, they would be able to do so easily enough. Understandably, the warship had then departed post-haste for the much larger natural satellite in order to track down the source of the transmissions, leaving their already dispatched hunting party to be re-embarked upon their return.

This happy turn of events meant that the yautja ground force now safely ensconced in the deep tunnels below the surface of the moonlet weren't, as yet, in any imminent danger of being targeted by Hish heavy weapons being fired from orbit. However, the greenhorn trainees still had to contend with the sheer numbers of the xenomorph horde _and_ the Hish hunting party already on site. Not to mention the unknown threat posed to them by the sailor senshi. The untested youngsters would be facing odds of at least ten to one – and probably even more than that.

Kujhade's mandibles clicked together in an approving chuckle. Good – this _chiva_ (test) would sort out the worthy from the unworthy amongst them! And, with anything like luck on their side, the Hish, Sailor Senshi and Xenomorphs were right now engaged in battle with each other, thereby thinning their own numbers out a bit before the late-arriving yautja hunters managed to track them down and join the fight.

As for his own situation, with the Hish Battlecruiser still unaware of his cloaked stealth ship lurking in their vicinity and the advantage of surprise in his favor, he had a nasty trick or two to pull on them that might just win the day for his own side, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

_Well, here it is - Chapter Five. And things are heating up._

_Awesome action on the way!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER FIVE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

As she heard the terrifying hisses from multiple moving sources pierce the gloom beyond their ill-lit surroundings, Sailor Pluto felt as if an icy cold hand had just touched her heart. The perturbed young woman had of course heard of the xenomorphs before, on a number of previous occasions over the course of the thousands of years that she had existed, in one reincarnation or another, as the Guardian of Time. However, even though she was a very experienced fighter, and had had been in many, many dangerous situations before, she never yet actually been in a real physical confrontation with these – _things_ – that were now stalking her and Hotaru in the darkness of their underground lair. But once – long, long ago in remote antiquity, during the time of the Silver Millennium – she had borne witness to what the xenomorphs had done to an unprotected Moon Kingdom colony in deep space.

On that profoundly disturbing occasion, the incident in question had occurred on an earthlike world that orbited a double-star system located about fifty light years away from the seat of the Moon Kingdom in the solar system of Sol. Upon receipt of a frantic distress signal from the unarmed and totally defenseless populace of the isolated colony planet, a Moon Kingdom starship that had been on routine patrol less than ten light years away from the double star had made haste to the site of the sudden and totally unexpected infestation. However the warship had arrived at the beleaguered planet far too late to save any of the colonists from their gruesome fate. So, after establishing beyond all doubt that the entire population of the small city in question had been the unwitting hosts to the invading xenomorph swarm, the hive of the nightmarish creatures had first been located and then nuked from orbit. And even though Queen Serenity had dispatched Sailor Pluto to the colony world within minutes of the surprise attack being reported to the Royal Court, all of this had occurred before she had managed to arrive on the scene.

However, after the above events, Sailor Pluto had descended to the lifeless city with the soldiers of the sweeper teams, just to make sure that every last one of the deadly creatures really _had_ been exterminated. And once the well-armed ground force had cautiously begun to explore the eerily deserted streets of the once thriving metropolis, they had discovered that some of the hapless colonists hadn't been dragged away to be used as hosts for the face huggers in the xenomorph hive, after all. Some of the braver men and women had tried to fight for their lives, and had been killed as a result. And the aftermath of their futile struggle was _not_ a sight for those with weak stomachs. Even though the horrific incident had occurred many thousands of earth years ago, the memory of their torn and broken bodies still remained as fresh in Pluto's mind as if the massacre had happened only last week.

So Sailor Pluto knew exactly what to expect at the hands of the merciless alien killing machines. Death would certainly be preferable to being taken alive by them, to be used as living hosts for the next xenomorph generation. Her original plan to evade that gruesome fate had been to teleport silently inside the hive, grab Hotaru, and slip out again before the xenomorphs even knew that she had been there. But from the sounds of things, that plan was now a bust!

_It's too late! They're here!_

Even as the two ashen-faced sailor senshi looked upwards, their expressive eyes wide with well-justified fear as they searched for the first sign of the trouble they knew was coming, grayish-black things like huge, three-meter long scorpions began to emerge through hidden shafts on the ceiling and on the organically flowing walls. Within a matter of only seconds, the eyeless faces of at least a dozen fully grown xenomorphs locked onto the cornered pair, saliva dripping from the drones' open mouths and double rows of serrated teeth. And the hissing stopped.

"_Saturn star-power make up!"_ the terrified Hotaru screamed out, backpedaling frantically, her Henshin stick nearly dropping from her shivering fingers as she brandished it in the frigid air.

"_Garnet Ball!"_ Sailor Pluto yelled out in the same instant, the crackling globe of iridescent-red protective energy expanding out of the huge jewel on her garnet rod to engulf them both in its protective embrace, just as the nightmarish creatures began to launch themselves down towards her and the sparkling nimbus of energy that was swirling around her powering-up daughter. _"Hotaru, run!"_

Grabbing Hotaru's hand even as the teen finished transforming into Sailor Saturn, the now-shielded pair fled through the nearest unblocked exit in the wall to their rear, the bug horde boiling across the room, on all four surfaces, after them.

-:-:-:-:-:-

At that exact moment, in a corridor not all that distant from the fleeing sailor senshi, the leader of the Hish expeditionary force gave the signal for their supposedly surprise attack on the xenomorph hive to commence. Clawed alien fingers tightened on the guardless triggers of stubby, handheld launchers, and shaped charges were sent rocketing into the access tunnels that lead into the secretion-lined outer rooms that held the now fully awake and ready swarm of monsters.

-:-:-:-:-:-

_FOOOMM!_

As the hallway to their rear suddenly filled with an explosive blaze of light and heat, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn, still protected by the former's 'Garnet ball' force field, instinctively flung themselves flat onto the hard, metal floor. A split-second later a wave of boiling flame intermixed with whirling pieces of smashed exoskeleton washed over their transparent shield of red energy, the following pack of xenomorphs having been engulfed and swept away a split-second earlier by the fearsome blast that had originated in the room they had vacated less than ten seconds before!

"_Setsuna-mama! What's going on?" _Hotaru wailed as the conflagration subsided and the pair made it up onto their feet, both totally unharmed by the blast thanks to Sailor Pluto's protective force field. _"What caused that explosion?"_

"It has to be the yautja! They're already here in the hive! Hotaru-chan, keep running! If they spot us, they'll try to kill us too!"

"_The who?"_

"The yautja! They're another alien species, they're hunters, and they're on this moon with us right now! They hunt monsters like the xenomorphs for sport and trophies, and sometimes people, as well! Come on, let's go!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

The rearguard of the yautja hunting party had only just made it down to the level that - according to the 3-dimensional holographic image being projected from the Sat-com that was built into M-di-H'dlak's wrist computer - held the _kainde amedha_ hive, when the sudden, violent and unmistakable sounds of a small war breaking out only a short distance along the very hallway they were now in, shattered the previous all-encompassing silence of the labyrinth.

First came the dust raising reverberation of a large explosion, and a flash of bright light momentarily outlined the junction of a second corridor, where it crossed at right angles the one they were now in. Then, interposed with the sound of xenomorph cries and hisses, came the familiar sounds of plasma weapons discharging and further muffled crump of detonations in the hidden distance.

It had to be the Hish. By the sounds of things, they had made sudden and violent contact with either their _kainde amedha_ quarry or the sailor senshi duo, or both.

M-di-H'dlak threw a quick look back at his keyed-up trainees. As yautja eyes had evolved to perceive infrared wavelengths beyond the visible light spectrum, the leader could easily see, despite their personal cloaking devices being active, that his students were all practically quivering with _ch'hkt-a_ (Nervous energy), such was their eagerness to come to grips with their now _very_ near foes.

And why shouldn't they be? This was what they were here for, after all. Time to let the snot-noses show their mettle.

The hunt master gestured, giving the signal to Guan-thei-de to lead the young hunters forward into the battle – which they did with unbridled enthusiasm. But M-di-H'dlak held back from joining the fray for the moment, for – as per his carefully thought out plan of attack - he had another more important task to accomplish.

The xenomorph queen was his first priority target. Take her out, and the swarm of drones would be bereft of her leadership, making them much more disorganized and therefore vulnerable. And right now was the best time to do it, while the _kainde amedha_ horde was concentrating their collective attention on the Hish. The hunting party under the more than capable command of Guan-thei-de were even now cutting the queen off from the drone swarm. They would serve as a very effective defensive screen for him, as any returning xenomorphs or attacking Hish would have to fight their way through the trainees, leaving him free to take out the queen and any remaining drones she may still have guarding the hive.

And – as befitting the leader of the hunting expedition - the honor of making that notable kill belonged to him, alone.

M-di-H'dlak activated his sat-com again as he moved off along a small side tunnel, scanning for the exact location of the no longer so well guarded queen.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Approximately four hundred kilometers above the small but exceedingly violent, four-sided war that was even now breaking out in the deeply buried subterranean battlefield below the surface of the tiny moonlet, in the control room on the cloaked yautja ship, Kujhade quickly punched up the old codes that he had been seeking. This ages old access code he had dug up from the ship's memory banks would be the salvation of the yautja expedition. For, buried deep beneath the surface of the distant and much larger outer satellite orbiting the dual worlds of Yaat was a hidden cache of yautja technology, the emergency devices awaiting only the correct signal to awaken from their ages-old slumber.

Unknown to the Hish aboard their returning warship, the transmitting devices that they had homed in on and destroyed on the surface of the larger moon were but decoys. The _real_ long-range sensors and sub-space transmitters were in fact buried in armored and shielded bunkers deep beneath the rock and dust covered surface of the lifeless satellite world. Here they had lain since the inner moonlet had first been terraformed into a hunting ground, well protected from accidental discovery, and capable of withstanding all but the most intense surface bombardment from not only the naturally occurring meteorite and small asteroid impacts that could reasonably be expected to occur from time-to-time, but also from any hostile nuclear or even antimatter devices from any invading enemy fleet.

The scanners and communicators were not the only secrets hidden below the huge outer moon's heavily cratered crust, either. For, displaying their usual forethought, the yautja had wisely envisioned a time when xenomorph infected starships in the process of escaping from the inner moonlet hunting ground – or even the tiny world itself, in its entirety - might need to be totally destroyed.

Millennia ago, when the trapped asteroid had originally been terraformed by the yautja into a hunting ground, the yautja elders of that time had decreed that there be no explosive devices placed on the moonlet itself. This was to guard against the very remote, but still real possibility of the _kainde amedha_ somehow finding a way to access the hidden doomsday devices and inadvertently damaging or tampering with their controls; either accidentally activating the bombs and totally destroying both themselves and their habitat in the process, or rendering the warheads inoperable. No, these long-gone yautja leaders reasoned that it was far easier and safer to place the means of the moonlet's destruction in a place that the swarming drones could never, ever reach, no matter how resourceful they were.

Which reason also ruled out placing any weapons on the curved, facing hemispheres of the two planets that the miniature world was trapped in between. If the _kainde amedha_ did somehow succeed in escaping the gravitational pull of the moonlet during the long years that the yautja hunters were absent from this planetary system, these unlucky planets would be the first very places to be overrun by the rapidly multiplying horde of alien carnivores.

Nor could the means of the planetoid's destruction be placed in orbit around the tiny moon, or anywhere else in near space, either. Technologically advanced as though the yautja were, the cloaking technology to render such large weapons in such an exposed location as open space permanently invisible and unnoticeable to the prying sensors of any visiting alien spacecraft – with who knew what capabilities - hadn't yet been devised.

Of course, the odds of any starships other than those of the wide-ranging yautja visiting this very remote star system were very slim, indeed – but not quite beyond the realms of possibility. And the last thing that the ever-careful yautja wanted was for any of their advanced weapons technology to fall into potentially hostile hands.

Fortunately, there was one location in the vicinity of Yaat that fitted the twin requirements of concealment and security to perfection.

There were no such security limitations applying to the large outer moon. Twice every Yaat day, the moon's distant orbit would cross the gap between its parent worlds and have the tiny inner moonlet in its sights. Furthermore, since the large moon orbited at some distance from the double world, any weapons strategically sited beneath its rugged surface had a _very_ wide field of fire, so could cover the approaches to the twin planets quite effectively as well.

For the above reasons, the outer satellite was now essentially a giant orbiting gun platform, the hidden weapons fully charged via heat exchangers that drew their power directly from the moon's still molten core. And while the weapons may have been old models, they were still in serviceable condition, and quite lethal even in this day and age.

As the prowling Hish warship was now about to find out, to its cost.

-:-:-:-:-:-

In his younger years, Guan-thei-de had been a warrior of note, and had taken part in many fierce engagements against not only the Xenomorphs and Hish, but also various other external threats, including expeditions against several other totally different alien races. And, being so well versed in the arts of war, the veteran knew that unlike on a hunt, with its rigid codes of conduct about what to hunt and how to hunt it, on the battlefield the emphasis was solely on personal survival with honor intact. Which meant that in close-range combat with aggressive adversaries such as the Hish, you did _not_ waste time issuing challenges to single combat, or give your foes any sort of a break, whatsoever. The only thing that counted was whether it was your side that were left standing victorious at the end of the battle, or not.

So, as the cloaked hunting party emerged from the unlit connecting tunnel into the first of the large, interconnected rooms at the edge of the xenomorph hive, the first warning that the preoccupied hish received as to the yautja presence was a searing volley of plasma bolts, directed at hish besieger and _kainde amedha_ defender alike. The hish force were directing their full attention and firepower against the waves of xenomorph drones that were pouring out of every black tunnel, shaft and entranceway that connected the large room to the rest of the hive, so the sudden yautja assault on them from their rear took them totally by surprise.

As the white-hot explosions hop-scotched amongst the uncloaked line of hish hunters, felling many before they even realized that they were under attack from a totally unexpected source, Guan-thei-de gestured to his right in a prearranged signal, sending a squad of yautja off into the nearest side tunnel of the large room they had just entered. Their job was to flank the hish force and seal off any chance of their retreat back to the surface in the direction they had arrived from. He then led his group of five young warriors forward in a sweep against the nearest of the still standing hish hunters, all of whom were even now hurriedly activating their own cloaking devices and blurring into invisibility, even as they began to return fire. The interlopers were now momentarily in disarray, caught between the xenomorphs and the yautja, fighting on two fronts instead of the one they had planned for.

Not that that tactic would do the remaining hish hunters any good against the yautja, or vice-versa, for that matter. Personal cloaking devices were designed to camouflage predators from the highly dangerous types of prey that they hunted, most of who had eyes that could see only the normal visible spectrum of light. Conversely, yautja vision, and that of subspecies such as the hish, had evolved to perceive light waves more towards the infrared end of the electromagnetic spectrum, so even cloaked yautja or Hish could be clearly perceived as glowing shapes by members of their own wider racial group, with or without the use of targeting helmets.

As could the eyeless _kainde amedha, _incidentally_._ With their preternatural senses, xenomorph drones could also sense the presence of nearby predators, whether the hunters were cloaked in invisibility or not. M-di-H'dlak had led his hunting party into the tunnels in invisible mode more as a wise precaution against their premature discovery by the sailor senshi than anything else.

Mind and body moving in perfect harmony, Guan-thei-de swiveled and cut down a leaping drone in mid-air with his combi-stick, deftly dodging the spray of acidic blood from its lopped off head. In a continuation of the same move, the veteran lunged forward, the spearhead at the tip of his weapon impaling the throat region of an attacking Hish, following up with a blow with the shaft that deflected the wrist blade strike of his dying adversary. A split second later, his plasmacaster spat fire, sending a second rapidly approaching drone flying apart in a shower of white sparks and splattering blood.

Now _this_ was what it was all about!

Of course the yautja didn't have it all their way. In the confusion of the violent battle and his excitement at being in on the kill, one trainee forgot to watch his back, and was overrun by the recklessly charging drone swarm. One, two of the nightmarish creatures went down under flashing wrist blades as the novice met his death with honor. The head of a second student abruptly dissolved in a shower of green blood as a Hish plasma bolt seared it from his shoulders; the right arm of a third student went the same way. But then, trapped between the deadly accurate yautja and the vicious drone swarm, the ten or so surviving Hish somehow managed to reform their shattered ranks into some semblance of order. They then commenced a fighting retreat back into the tunnel through which they had arrived, losing two more of their number as they did so.

As the remaining Hish vanished from view, Guan-thei-de turned his full attention back to the darting, hissing xenomorphs; his plasmacaster blasting great gaping holes through their massed ranks even as fresh waves of them appeared at the entrance tunnels on the far side of the smoke and gore-filled cavern room. Even though he had lost two of his students, the adjutant was pleased with what their sudden ambush had already achieved. His helmet display was informing him that the bodies of at least twelve Hish and at least twice that many _kainde amedha_ lay scattered across the smoking, shattered, acid bubbling floor of the expansive room before him – and that already sizeable body count of the latter was rapidly being added to by his three remaining, fiercely fighting trainees and his own efforts. Even better, instead of concentrating their full attention on the yautja, a fair percentage of the still emerging, seemingly endless stream of xenomorph drones were pouring into the side hallway after the battered survivors of the retreating enemy force. With luck, the remaining Hish would become trapped between the pursuing xenomorphs and the six-yautja detachment he had sent into that very tunnel at the start of the battle, and be totally annihilated at their combined hands. In the meantime, all he and his remaining students had to do was to hold the line right here - which _wasn't_ going to be easy to do – until M-di-H'dlak had achieved his self-appointed objective of taking out the xenomorph queen.

A difficult task that Guan-thei-de would have very much liked to attempt himself, but orders were orders. Besides, he had his hands full right here at this time, keeping the raw recruits from breaking formation in their eagerness to physically engage their nightmarish prey. If this were to happen, it would inadvertently dilute the effect that their suppressing fire was having upon the ferocious and relentless _kainde amedha_ attack, increasing the possibility that the small band of hunters would be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Only through teamwork could the yautja possibly win against odds such as these.

Luckily for the survival prospects of the late arriving yautja, the hish explosives had already done a good job of thinning out the ranks of the xenomorph drone swarm before they had managed to arrive on the scene. But, by the looks of things, enough of the very vicious and agile creatures still remained alive to make the holding part of the mission anything but a sinecure.

However, one factor was definitely in their favor. _Kainde_ _amedha_ weren't at their horrific best in a straight out fight on open, flat ground with no cover, such as in this large room. They were ambush predators, preferring to strike from the shadows, usually from above or behind their prospective victims. So, providing that the yautja line wasn't flanked or attacked from the rear, the agile yautja hunters with their sophisticated long-range weaponry had a distinct advantage over the numerically superior xenomorph drones.

As he directed the plasma bolt barrage from his depleted squad to best effect, the adjutant finally noticed through the strobe-like flashes of plasma detonations and clouds of swirling, acrid smoke, that the third surviving trainee was in fact seriously wounded. Guan-thei-de had been far too preoccupied to notice it before. However, the individual in question was still enthusiastically firing his shoulder-mounted plasmacaster into the xenomorph horde, his blown off arm safely stowed in the mesh bag that was usually used for carrying trophies of the hunt.

Guan-thei-de chuckled as he blasted a scurrying drone off the shadowy, pockmarked ceiling, sending the shattered creature crashing down amidst a hail of sparks upon several of its littermates. Pity about that detached arm – the stripling was showing a good degree of potential. Still, having been cleanly seared off by a hostile plasma bolt, the reclaimed appendage could be reattached to its owner easily enough, if the injured student survived long enough to make it back to the medi-bay on their ship, that is…?

But that was a big 'if'. Even though their successful ambush had succeeded in routing their trespassing Hish rivals, this battle was far from being won. Guan-thei-de knew that there was still a good chance that _none_ of the yautja hunting party would survive beyond the next few minutes – himself included.

_'__Dtai'Kai-dte sa-de nau'gkon dtain'aun bpi-de.' _

_'The fight begun would not end until the end.'_


	6. Chapter 6

_Hi, and welcome to Chapter Six._

_I have almost completely finished writing the entire rest of this story now. So expect weekly updates from now on._

_This chapter - it's all on!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER SIX**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

However, Guan-thei-de's faith in the ability of the five-student detachment he had dispatched to cut off the hish line of retreat would prove to be misplaced. For the young, inexperienced hunters had already struck trouble with a capital 'T', in the form of a totally unexpected surprise encounter with the oomans.

Having slipped unseen into the indicated hallway behind the disorganized Hish after the opening volley of the yautja attack, the line of wispy apparitions raced along its dark expanse, striving to reach the cross tunnel up ahead of them that intersected with the one they were in. Once in position at that strategic junction, the hunters would be on the right flank of the xenomorph hive. From there, they would not only be able to halt any attempted retreat by any Hish survivors along the corridor they had originally arrived through, but would also have a clear field of fire directly along the intersecting corridor up ahead of them into the next inner room of the xenomorph hive. This would enable the eager hunters to target and annihilate a (hopefully) sizeable percentage of any _Kainde_ _amedha_ reinforcements that might attempt to reach their sorely depleted drone army on the front line of the raging battle, or use these passageways in an attempt to outflank Guan-thei-de's fiercely fighting holding party in the room adjoining the front of their hive.

The yautja reached their objective successfully. But no sooner had they taken up defensive positions on the crossroads, when the pair of out-of-place sailor senshi, both enclosed in a semi-transparent, red energy globe of unknown composition, appeared from the left-hand side of the very next intersection along from the one the hunters had just occupied. As the diminutive figures burst into view, less than twenty meters away from the yautja position, the oomans hesitated for a second as if unsure of which way to go. They then abruptly changed direction, to run headlong down the corridor that led directly to the yautja detachment!

Despite their strict orders from their leader to avoid the sailor senshi until a proper ambush could be set for them, no yautja trainee was realistically going to pass up such a golden opportunity for distinction and notoriety as this. So, instead of evading the rapidly approaching pair by ducking back into the hallway they had only seconds ago emerged from, all five bloodthirsty students enthusiastically opened up on the newcomers with their shoulder mounted plasmacasters, the two individuals whom had previously been on sentry duty discharging their net guns at the tiny interlopers, as well.

As the volley of superheated plasma beads struck Sailor Pluto's 'Garnet ball' force field head-on, they instantly dissolved away into nothingness, their explosive energy dissipated and absorbed by its shimmering, translucent surface, having serving only to strengthen the shield surrounding the startled pair!

The flying nets proved to be equally useless in this situation. Striking the curved globe of protective energy a couple of seconds after the plasma bolts, both mesh capture devices slipped harmlessly off the frictionless surface and spun away into the darkness, having found nothing to wrap around or gain purchase on.

"_Sailor Pluto! We're being attacked-!"_ Hotaru squawked, hurriedly raising her Silence glaive in preparation to firing it, as the pair skidded to a halt. _"But I can't see by who! There's nothing th-!"_

"_Chronos Typhoon!"_

Pluto hadn't even hesitated before launching her attack at the invisible monsters ahead of them, beating Sailor Saturn to the punch. With the tunnels behind them alive with xenomorphs, she instinctively knew that retreat back the way they had come would be tantamount to suicide. So their best chance of survival was to punch a hole directly through the yautja war party blocking their escape route, and then leave their remnants and any xenomorphs that might still be in hot pursuit of Hotaru and her to fight it out amongst each other.

At her command, a tornado of energy expanded out of the huge gem at the head of her artifact, sweeping through first her 'Garnet ball' shield and then the rain of incoming plasma bolts, to strike directly in the center of the mass of ghostlike shapes ahead of them, the powerful blast skittling the quintet of nearly invisible giants like tenpins.

"Keep going, Hotaru-chan! Straight through them!"

"Oh – okay…!"

Pluto fired again, the wave of energy smashing the two still moving shapes backwards into the far wall. The hunter's cloaking devices failed in showers of sparks under the deadly onslaught, rendering them fully visible. As the sailor senshi duo came within range of the last, unbelievably still active yautja, a plasma bolt from its shoulder mounted plasmacaster exploded against their force field, and a huge clawed hand, backed by a pair of saw-edged wrist blades, flashed upwards, _through_ the protective energy field! Sailor Saturn, scared though she was, skillfully managed to block the strike with the blade of her Silence glaive, slicing the hand of her attacker clean off in the process. A second later, Sailor Pluto thrust downwards with the head of her Garnet rod, it's activated 'Chronos disintegrator' striking the yautja in the throat region between his ultra hard facemask and breastplate, decapitating the monstrous alien hunter forthwith.

And then, in the space of a chaotic, very violent few seconds, their escape route was clear of all opposition.

"It's sure lucky for us that you don't have to drop your force field to launch your 'Chronos typhoon' attack, Setsuna-mama," Sailor Saturn panted out with relief as the shielded pair ran through the now unblocked intersection. Then her face twisted in an expression of disgust, as they had to jump the huge body of one of their fallen adversaries. _"Eww!_ There's some sort of green blood everywhere!" Her stomach heaved. "I feel like I'm gonna be sick!"

"'_Whew!' _Yes, but we had a very close call there. My 'Garnet ball' is proof against most energy attacks, but the metal that the yautja use for their blade weapons – at close range one of them managed to somehow get through my force field! Good job with blocking it, Hotaru-chan."

"Th-thanks, Setsuna-Mama," Sailor Saturn shakily replied, as her stomach settled again. "So those big, invisible things that attacked us just then were the yautja you warned me about?"

"Yes, Hotaru-chan, they were."

"They're _huge!_ What, exactly are they, and where do they come from? In outer space, I mean."

"Nobody knows for sure, Hotaru-chan. Including me. But the yautja have been around out here in deep space for a long, long time. In one of our previous lives, back during the time of the Silver Millennium, we had the occasional bit of trouble with them, but you wouldn't remember any of that now. No one knows what planet or planets they come from, but the yautja seem to be fairly widespread throughout the galaxy. Apparently even on the far side of the galactic core, where we are now, curse the luck!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

M-di-H'dlak may have been a veteran warrior of many a bloody conflict over his long career. But not even he would have attempted to infiltrate a _kainde_ _amedha_ hive alone, if not for the major distraction currently being caused by the small war now raging outside the contorted, organically flowing nesting area of the giant and utterly ruthless killing machine that was his intended prey.

The yautja leader had encountered only one drone guard on his circulus route into the stronghold. Its headless corpse now lay in a steaming pool of its own acidic blood, below its bolt-hole in the secretion covered corridor behind him, barbed, skeletal tail still twitching in its death throes.

As he finally inched into the charred remnants of the nesting chamber that should have held his quarry, M-di-H'dlak felt a rush of disappointment at what he was seeing, both visually with his own eyes and on the heads-up display of his facemask visor. Judging by his blasted surroundings, the hish had obviously beaten him to this location; incinerating everything they had found here, eggs, guards, any lurking face huggers, the lot.

But, the hunt master realized, in a surge of newfound relief, they had _not_ managed to get the queen. The canny hive mother had obviously left the room before the attack had begun. There was no sign at all of her mountainous corpse, or even of any sizeable, heat blackened body parts that could have been from it.

This stroke of good fortune meant that he still had a slim chance of achieving his ambition. However, doing so would be even less easy than it had been before. For, since _kainde_ _amedha_ did not radiate body heat, the creatures always being the same ambient temperature as their surroundings, there was no infrared trail for him to track the hive mother down by. And even if there previously had been a trail of sorts to follow, the hish flame-bombs would have wiped any trace of it from this egg chamber, which now resembled nothing so much as a shattered, blackened and burnt lava field.

"_C'jit!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

The yautja leader was not the only sentient in the vicinity of the hive with a problem to solve. In their so-far futile attempt to escape from the multi-levelled battlefield, because of a huge pile of metallic debris blocking their hoped for escape route, the hunted sailor senshi had been forced to retrace their steps for some distance back the way they had just come. After taking a side corridor in an effort to circumvent the obstruction, they were just now discovering that they were walking directly towards fresh trouble. _Really bad _trouble.

"Mama! I can hear xenomorphs somewhere in the darkness ahead of us! And another group of _something_ is heading this way from behind us, as well! We're trapped between them!"

That 'something' approaching from their rear was the remnant of the Hish force, under constant, fierce attack from their erstwhile prey as they retreated down the very same pitch-black corridor as the sailor senshi were now cornered in. As the lost pair of Outer senshi came to an abrupt halt, their bodies rigid with apprehension, Pluto realized the danger they were in. From behind them the eerie howling of hish war cries and the high pressure steam-like hissing of the xenomorphs was growing steadily louder, intermixed with the distinctive sound of blaster fire and 'thump!' of explosions. Hotaru was right, that luckily still distant cacophony of destruction was definitely heading along this very hallway towards them!

As were the hissing and scuttling sounds from the darkness to their front!

Neither Sailor Pluto nor Sailor Saturn had yet realized that there were in fact _two_ yautja subspecies embroiled in the conflict raging all around them. Not that that knowledge would have made the slightest bit of difference to their predicament, of course. Both clans would take their heads in an eye blink, if given the chance.

"Damn! Wait-! Hotaru-chan, down here, quickly!"

In the red glow of her Garnet crystal, Sailor Pluto had just noticed a ragged blast hole in the left-hand side of the secretion-lined floor. The opening was only a few metres ahead of them, and even better, it was just big enough for them to slip through. Wasting no time, Sailor Pluto quickly switched off her force field, then dropped down through the burnt and twisted gap in the metal floor to the next level below them, Sailor Saturn immediately following suit.

And then, just as she was straightening up to look around, a fast, skittering movement in the darkness at floor level caught Pluto's eye. And the thing was heading directly for her!

"_Watch out!"_

Even as she yelled her warning, Sailor Pluto pivoted about and one long, tanned, incredibly shapely leg lashed out, her booted foot striking the pouncing face hugger with the force of a hard-swung sledgehammer, sending it splattering in a spray of green ichor against the opposing wall of the corridor.

"A Face hugger! Hotaru-chan, watch out for them! If they latch onto your face, then they're almost impossible to get off, even for us!"

"One attacked me just before, Mama," Sailor Saturn replied, her silence glaive now at the on-guard position and covering the hallway to their rear. However, her wide eyes were still transfixed on the squashed horror slumped in a weakly moving heap at the base of the wall, each bubbling, noxious smoke-emitting splatter of the thing's acidic blood quickly eating its way with an audible hissing sound into its ancient metal surroundings. "But it didn't manage to get me."

"_What?"_ Sailor Pluto immediately looked down at the girl at her side, sudden worry now on her face. "How did you avoid it attaching itself to your face?" Then her anxious expression deepened into one of real alarm. "It…it _didn't_ manage to fasten on to you, Hotaru-chan, did it-?"

"No, it didn't, Mama, I swear. When it attacked me, I was stuck in that dried resiny stuff at the time so I couldn't move to protect myself. But my 'Save my Soul' force field automatically activated itself and fried the face hugger thingy as it was jumping towards me," Hotaru quickly explained, somewhat taken aback at the look her mother was now giving her. "I'm fine, _really."_

Sailor Pluto breathed out a _huge_ sigh of relief, which emotion also permeated her tone as she spoke up again. "You had a very lucky escape there, Hotaru-chan," she informed the younger girl. "If that thing had managed to attach itself to your face, it would have been all over for you! Once on, they're almost impossible to get off, because as you can see, they've got acidic blood. And when they _do_ eventually let go of you-! _Er_, never mind this last bit…"

_Hotaru-chan doesn't need to know what would have happened to her after the face hugger had fallen off! That's far too gruesome. Some things are better left unsaid._

"What would have happened then, Mama?"

"_Um-?_ Let's…just say that you would have died a short time later, in not a very nice way, okay?"

"_Oh…? Um _– right…"

"Anyway, we'd best keep moving," Pluto suggested, quickly changing the subject before any more awkward questions could be asked of her. "Let the xenomorphs and the yautja fight it out with each other up there. Hopefully, they'll all be concentrating on each other, and forget all about us?"

"_I wish!_ But somehow I don't think that we're going to be that lucky, Setsuna-mama._"_

"As well as face-huggers, keep watching out for hidden, full-sized xenomorphs down here, too, Hotaru-chan," Pluto cautioned as they warily moved off along the ill-lit passageway, the sounds of battle fading as they began to put distance between themselves and the violent conflict above and to their rear. "Their body temperature is exactly the same as their surroundings, so I'm having a great deal of trouble sensing their presence."

"Why don't we both just teleport out of here straight out into space, Mama?" Sailor Saturn suggested, her expression brightening at her sudden idea for instant escape from the predicament they were in." That'll get us out of danger right away, won't it?"

"We can't," Pluto explained, a worried tone returning to her voice. "There's some sort of an energy field active down here that is disrupting our ability to sailor-teleport. I noticed its much weaker effect before, when I jumped into the xenomorph hive to rescue you. I was experienced enough to compensate for it then, but the further down into this moon we both descend, the stronger the interference is becoming and the less control we would have as to where we will rematerialize back into normal space. So if we tried to teleport now, we'd be literally jumping blind. We could end up anywhere – including rematerializing into the solid rock of this moon's crust! And doing that…would be _messy."_

"Ooh, yuk…!" Sailor Saturn shivered at the frightening thought. "So we daren't try teleporting back into space, and so we've got no choice but to make it out of here on foot, Mama?"

"Yes. Well, at least as far as the upper levels of this maze, anyway, where the energy field is weak enough to allow for us to teleport successfully. And now that I think about it, have you noticed that the gravity in here is also getting stronger the further down we go, Hotaru-chan? It looks like I was right – this moonlet _does_ have a core of some type of heavy matter. And the closer we get to it, the heavier we're going to feel."

"Actually, yeah. I was wondering why I was feeling so weighed down in here, but I thought it was just because I'm tired."

Then she was struck by an intriguing thought. "Hey? Maybe this energy field has something to do with the stronger gravity, Setsuna- mama?"

"Probably," Pluto agreed, her thoughts now switching to work on that very real possibility. "At a guess, it's most likely some sort of a containment field, designed to prevent the escape of any dangerous subatomic particles from whatever the energy source here is – or was. And this still-active containment field must be affecting matter at the quantum level, if it is disrupting our ability to sailor-teleport. However, whatever advanced technology the builders of this place are using to create it is way beyond my level of technical expertise though."

…_? Something I just said right then gave me a sudden sense of déjà vu, _the green-haired young woman realized, coming to an abrupt halt for a moment as some long forgotten fact began to tug insistently at her mind. _And this marking on the wall over there…I'm sure I've seen something similar before. But where…? _

"Setsuna-mama? What's wrong?"

As Sailor Saturn's nervous tone registered in her mind, Sailor Pluto relaxed again, and calmly looked down at the anxious teen at her side.

"Oh, it's nothing, Hotaru-chan. Sorry to startle you. I was just trying to recall an old memory that may or may not be relevant to the situation we're now in," she quickly explained, giving her young companion a half-hearted grin of reassurance. "Come on, we'd best keep moving before we're spotted again."

-:-:-:-:-:-

In the confusion of the three-way pitched battle now being fought in the surrounding rooms and tunnels, M-di-H'dlak found little trouble in making his way unnoticed along his prior route through the dark, dank, shadow-clad outer rooms of the xenomorph hive, back towards where the rest of his hunting party was making their stand. The hunt master hadn't bothered bringing the severed head of the drone guard back with him to display to his companions, because doing so would be pointless. His personal trophy wall already had a couple of much larger and more imposing _kainde_ _amedha_ specimen heads on it, and besides, his helmet camera had visually recorded the kill at the time it happened as testament to his prowess. So no physical trophy was necessary as proof of his deed.

And then, less than fifty meters away from the firefight in the front room, M-di-H'dlak came upon the remains of the second yautja detachment.

As he looked down at their mangled corpses, the yautja leader was displeased, but not overly surprised by what he was seeing. He had, after all, been expecting yautja casualties during the battle. Only two of the five fallen trainee yautja in the detachment were still weakly twitching in pools of their own lifeblood, and that pair was obviously in their death throes.

To his trained eyes, it was obvious what had happened. By the looks of things, this wasn't Hish or _kainde_ _amedha_ work, because no enemy corpses were in the vicinity. Inexperienced though they had been, five trainee yautja should have accounted for at least one or two dead enemies before being overwhelmed. The simple fact that they hadn't killed even a single one of their attackers spoke volumes as to who must have been responsible for their demise.

With the Hish and the xenomorphs ruled out, that left only one other possible cause for their defeat – one or both of the super-humanoid sailor senshi interlopers must have decimated this squad of overeager raw recruits, and in only a matter of seconds.

Upon realizing this unpalatable fact, the annoyed M-di-H'dlak felt little sympathy for his fallen trainees – even though he had been just as full of piss and vinegar as them when he had been their age. For, by the looks of things, in the excitement of unexpectedly finding the sailor senshi, they had totally ignored their orders and charged headlong into battle against the two trespassing oomans.

Even worse, once their first volley or volleys of plasma bolts had obviously proven to be ineffective against the oomans, the young idiots should have realized that they were outmatched, and had the common sense to fall back and wait for reinforcements, not waste their lives a futile frontal assault with only their hand weapons against the ultra powerful strangers.

Bravery was a prerequisite amongst the yautja. Reckless foolhardiness in the face of an obviously superior enemy was not. As his newly deceased students had just proven beyond all doubt, those young yautja who didn't recognize that difference rarely lived long enough to profit from their mistake.

Still, these overconfident, reckless striplings had been _his_ trainees – and now he would personally avenge them.

But first he had to track the culprits down…

There! The glowing traces of two sets of what were obviously ooman boot prints were showing up clearly on his tactical visor. And judging by the marks he could see and the length of their stride, both sailor senshi had been heading at some speed down this hallway right here-!

M-di-H'dlak broke radio silence and contacted Guan-thei-de to inform him of the situation, specifically the escape of the xenomorph queen and the decimation of the squad that had been dispatched to the location he was now at. Upon being told in turn of the Hish defeat and that the three surviving yautja with his adjutant were admirably holding their own against the remaining _kainde_ _amedha_ drones, the yautja leader ordered them to continue to hold their present position for the moment, and to await further instructions. He then set off on his new search-and-destroy mission.

The alien queen may have evaded him for the time being, but the sailor senshi would not – not with two fresh heat trails leading him directly to them, they wouldn't!

And once he had caught up with them-?

_Shikkk!_

Sailor senshi skulls were prized and – for obvious reasons - _very_ rare possessions. Revenge for the deaths of his students would not only be personally satisfying, but the trophies he would take away from the encounter would ensure a major boost to his already considerable status amongst the yautja clans.

Even more than the head of the _K__ainde_ _amedha_ queen would do.

-:-:-:-:-:-

_Author's Note:_

_Next Chapter - the secret of the moonlet is revealed!_

_Also, a major confrontation (and LOTS of other action, too.)_


	7. Chapter 7

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER SEVEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Unaware that they were now being stalked by a far more experienced and lethal foe than any that they had so far faced in this seemingly endless maze of subterranean tunnels, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn were at that moment quickly descending down to yet another lower level. The lost pair hadn't really had a choice about having to venture even deeper below the moonlet's surface, either. Because the much bigger metal corridor they were now following had ended in a descending flight of very large steps, their choice was simple – either go down them, or retrace their route yet again, back towards the tunnel warfare that they could still faintly hear going on above and behind them.

As they hurried along, in the light from her Garnet rod, Sailor Pluto was carefully scrutinizing the cast metal engravings and pictographs that covered the walls of their hoped-for escape path. For she was sure that she had seen their like somewhere before. And once she was absolutely sure that her old memories were in fact correct, the leader of the Outer senshi spoke up.

"Hotaru-chan. From my observations, I now have a fair idea of what this small moon really is, and whom it was that originally constructed at least this metal part of it. And its builders _weren't_ the yautja. I'm now certain of that fact."

"The yautja _didn't _build this place, Setsuna-mama?" Sailor Saturn repeated in a querulous tone. "How do you know that?"

"Because I…recognize some of these symbols, Hotaru-chan. I've seen them before, long ago, during the time of the Silver Millennium. These markings were on some several-million-year-old alien artifacts that a Moon Kingdom deep space exploration vessel brought back to the Palace labs for further analysis. Yes, it all fits-!"

"Huh? I don't understand what you're telling me, Mama?"

"Sorry, Hotaru-chan. I'll explain it clearer to you. My theory is this. When I was searching for you before, I found the long-deceased body of a huge creature down in one of these larger tunnels," Sailor Pluto grimly explained to her _protégé_. "The thing had been dead for a long, long time, so I didn't recognize what alien species it had belonged to when I observed it. But now, after what I'm seeing right here on the walls of this outsized corridor, I strongly suspect that it was a member of the race known as the 'Space Jockeys'."

"The 'Space Jockeys'?" the teen Sailor Saturn exclaimed, looking wide-eyed up at her mother, her expression in the soft red light from the garnet crystal a mixture of surprise, confusion and disbelief. "Who are they? And you found the body of one of them? So you're saying that an even _more_ _ancient_ alien species than the yautja used to own this moon?"

"Yes, I am. And we knew even less about them than we did about the yautja, except that the Space Jockeys were real giants, far, far bigger than even the yautja are. And also that they've been lurking around somewhere out in deep, uncharted space for millions of years. For much longer than even the yautja have been out here."

Sailor Saturn thoughts clicked, and she guessed at what her mother was about to tell her. She gestured at their dark surroundings with her free hand. "So you think _they_ built all of this, Mama?"

"Yes. I now think this small moon was originally a 'Space Jockey' starship, Hotaru-chan; with control rooms and access tunnels built though its outer crust. Or maybe they possessed a proper starship, part of which we're inside right now. But something went wrong. And over the hundreds of thousands of years their derelict ship has been drifting though space, this perfectly circular moonlet formed naturally around it from compacted matter, just like we theorized might have happened when we talked about how it came into being, before. The high gravity of this derelict starship is easily strong enough to attract floating space debris such as dust and rocks to it, as we're both now experiencing for ourselves."

"But if this little moon was originally an interstellar starship, or naturally formed around one, how do you explain the alien trees and other plants on its surface?" Hotaru asked. "I know that trees can't survive in open space, without an atmosphere and liquid water. So they must have been planted long after that 'Space Jockey' alien you found died. In fact, it could only have happened after this little moon had first formed from space debris around their starship, and then somehow gotten stuck in a stationary orbit in the atmosphere between those two big planets."

"That's true," Pluto conceded. "On _all _counts. From the decrepit state it was in, the 'Space Jockey' corpse I found could have been lying there in the tunnel for at least a million years. Probably even longer than that, since there don't seem to be any bacteria here to decompose dead creatures. So it would already have been long dead at the time the forest was created on the surface."

"And what about those horrible black xenomorph monsters that must have carried me away before, when I was unconscious?" Hotaru continued, suppressing her shudder with an effort. "How did _they_ manage to get here?"

"In light of what we now know, that is not hard to answer, either. Long after its original 'Space Jockey' builders were gone, a yautja starship must have landed here, maybe even as far back in time as when this moonlet first became trapped between the planets," Sailor Pluto speculated, methodically thinking the problem through in light of what they had already deduced. "In all probability, the xenomorphs were an integral part of this ship's cargo. And, after the yautja had finished terraforming its formerly barren exterior into a suitable hunting habitat, using either alien plants they brought here themselves, or native plants from the surrounding planetary surfaces, the xenomorphs were deliberately released here by them for recreational hunting purposes."

_But that doesn't explain why the 'Space Jockey' corpse that I found had that emergence hole in its chest area, _Pluto silently reminded herself. _Surely the xenomorphs couldn't have been here for that long – could they?_ She unconsciously shivered at the thought.

"You mentioned to me before that the yautja aliens hunt the xenomorphs," Sailor Saturn stated. Then her mouth fell open with astonishment again. "Wait a minute – _recreational?_ Y_ou're saying that they do it for fun?"_

"Yes. And they hunt other dangerous creatures as well. In fact, the more dangerous the prey, the better they like it."

"Ohmygosh! But…if that's true, then how come the xenomorphs haven't been exterminated already? If the yautja really have been coming here to hunt them for thousands of years, you would think that they would have gotten them all by now?"

"Well, the yautja probably make sure to leave one or two of them still alive after each hunt, Hotaru-chan, to repopulate the planetoid for their next scheduled visit, which probably happens every hundred years or so, earth time. Maybe the yautja leave behind suitable animal host species for the xenomorph face-huggers as well – that would certainly explain the presence of that big insect-like creature that I also found dead in one of the tunnels when I was searching for you. Furthermore, xenomorphs are very tough and adaptable, and are capable of hibernation for extended periods of time. The comparatively benign environment on this moonlet would pose little challenge to their survival at all during the century or so between each yautja expedition to here."

"I see. Say, Mama, did you notice that those xenomorph things don't have any eyes?" Hotaru then pointed out to the older girl, her own anxious eyes huge in the half-light of the corridor. "How do they _see_ down here in the darkness – or _anywhere_ for that matter?"

"Maybe they're nocturnal," Sailor Pluto guessed. "From what I know of xenomorphs, they usually live underground, in the dark, and mostly come out at night. I also know that they can 'see' in other ways, so maybe they have no need for real eyes?"

"Yes, that's probably it. Hey, Setsuna-mama? On the subject of seeing things, how come it's steadily getting brighter in here? I can see much further down the hallway in front of us, now."

"Wha-? Oh, you're right! There must be a light source of some sort up ahead of us."

"Yeah - _hey!_ Maybe this glow is coming down a shaft, or a hole, all of the way down to here from the moon's surface?" Saturn enthused, perking up at the possibility that they had at last found a way to escape from this frightening underground labyrinth. "If it is, we can levitate straight up the shaft and get out that way!"

"I…suspect not, Hotaru-chan. At this depth, the light seems far too bright to be from that. But we'll definitely check it out, just in case."

-:-:-:-:-:-

It was right about then, that Kujhade made his move.

From the cloaked, drifting yautja scout ship, a coded burst of instructions was sent at the speed of light, via a narrow, totally invisible laser beam, directly to a programmed set of co-ordinates on the heavily cratered facing surface of the large, outer moon. And as the activation codes were received, ancient yautja technology, hidden deep beneath the surface, hummed back into electronic life.

On the far side of the distant moon, a stealth missile awoke from ages-old dormancy, powering up and moving into position on its launcher. After receiving its targeting data, and running through its automated safety checks, the four meter long projectile lifted off from its camouflaged, _very_ deeply buried subsurface bunker, rapidly gaining speed and altitude as it arced around the lifeless, dusty world below.

The now invisible missile had achieved escape velocity and cut its main propulsion unit well before it emerged over the rim of the moon, so no telltale heat flare gave warning to the Hish warship that the lethal device was on its tail. The missile locked on to the rear section of the imposing Hish cruiser as it glided back towards the gap between the double planet, swiftly closing the distance between it and its formidable, so-far unsuspecting target.

-:-:-:-:-:-

After descending the flight of oversized steps, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn saw that the hallway they were following had come to a dead end. A huge pair of sliding doors, at least ten meters tall and half a meter in thickness, was set into the wall ahead of them. Luckily, the massive barrier was still partially open in its center. And through this two meter wide gap was streaming the dim, muted light that the sailor senshi had noticed before.

The two lost travellers looked at each other with uncertainly, the possibility that this was a trap set for them on both of their minds.

"Do we go in, Mama?"

"I don't sense any emissions of danger coming from inside there, Hotaru-chan. How about you?"

"Nothing either, Mama. It feels empty…and old."

"All right, we'll go in for a look," Pluto decided. "But first-!"

The 'Garnet ball' force field expanded out of her artifact, engulfing both in its protective embrace once again.

"_Just in case."_

"_Wow_. I'm feeling really weighted down in here, even as Sailor Saturn," Hotaru stated, as the pair, staff weapons at the ready in case of an ambush, made their way cautiously though the opening. "Those 'Space Jockey' creatures must be native to a world with really strong gravity if these are the conditions that they prefer."

"Yes," Sailor Pluto responded, feeling uneasy as they came to a halt just inside the opening, to stare around at the banks of barely active terminals and other esoteric machinery, all of huge proportions, which lined the walls of this circular, dome-ceilinged room. "Or…maybe these conditions _aren't_ what they prefer?"

"…? What do you mean by that, Mama?"

"Consider this. Maybe, several million years ago, something went badly wrong down here, and this moon's gravity increased from what it previously was, to beyond tolerable levels for them? After all, this gee-force is _far_ too intense for normal humanoid life forms to stand for any length of time. And, judging by the size and bulk of that semi-fossilized 'Space Jockey' body I found, it must have weighted a lot when alive, even in what we would consider to be normal gravity, such as that on Earth. However, in a gravitational field as strong as the one here in this room, in all probability, creatures of their mass would barely be able to move around at all."

"Oh…? But what about the xenomorphs, then," Saturn queried, a frown on her face. "They may be strong like ants, but they look to be fairly spindly. So how could _they_ survive this far underground? Wouldn't this heavy gravity this far down just break their legs?"

"Yes, the xenomorphs do have a much lighter body structure than the 'Space Jockeys'. However, xenomorphs usually go around on all four legs, remember? Also, their armored exoskeletons are very lightweight. The outer layer of it is made of polarized silicon, so it's extremely tough and durable. For all of these reasons, their body design is much more suited to heavy gravity than that of the 'Space Jockeys'."

"I see? So we're not safe from them, even down here?"

"No, we're not. Anyway, back to this gravity field. We must be very close to the heavy matter core of this moonlet, if it's affecting us, even as sailor senshi, as much as this? Hold on a minute, I'm going to try a little experiment."

Sailor Pluto first dematerialized her 'Garnet ball' force field, and then tried to rise up off the metal floor and hover in mid-air.

With zero physical result.

"Kami-sama! This can't be right? Whilst my levitation ability can counteract some of this heavier gravity and lighten its effect on me, I can't fly, or hover above ground level anymore," she exclaimed with surprise, dropping back down onto her heels as she abandoned her fruitless effort to levitate. "But for this to be happening to me…that must mean it's not just a chunk of any normal type of compressed heavy matter at the center of this moonlet–?"

"What? Let me try…hey, you're right, Setsuna-mama! I can't do it, either! But if we can't levitate any more, then…what does that mean, exactly-?"

"Oh, _heck,"_ Pluto whispered with foreboding, feeling a sudden chill sweep through her body as she hit upon the answer. "Then it must be a-?"

"_It means what, Mama?"_

"A gravitational pull…this strong…has got to be from a singularity! Which means that there's a _miniature black hole_ below us, Hotaru-chan!" Pluto then closed her eyes and a frown of concentration appeared on her face for a couple of seconds as she checked out her alarming theory. "Yes, I'm right! I can sense its event horizon almost a kilometer below us, at the exact center of the open sphere of space enclosed by this moonlet! And there's nothing between it and us but an empty void! This moonlet is basically just a rigid outer shell surrounding a small black hole!"

"_A black hole?" _her companion gasped, freezing rigid with shock. "But, Mama, that _can't_ be right! How is that possible?"

"_Very_ advanced technology, that's how," Pluto continued in amazement, continuing her mental scanning of their strange surroundings even as she imparted what she was discovering to her incredulous-looking companion. "And, now that I know what is _really_ below us, this bizarre moonlet is finally beginning to make some sense to me."

"_It's making sense?"_ Saturn squawked, staring up at her mother like she was crazy._ "How?"_

"Bear with me, Hotaru-chan, and I'll tell you. Let's start with what we already know about this moonlet, and work our way through to its logical conclusion from there, shall we?"

"Okay, Setsuna-mama, I'm listening."

"Right. Now, from what I have already observed on our way down to this lower level, I've deduced that the outer crust of this tiny moon is only about one hundred meters thick, from its surface down to where we are standing now. You and I have already talked about how the top ten or twenty meters of it could be a naturally accumulating layer of rock and space dust, attracted down onto the moonlet's surface by its abnormally strong gravity over millions of years. But the lower levels aren't natural at all – as we can both plainly see, they were built. And judging by the size of these machines in here, almost certainly by the 'Space Jockey' aliens. Right now, the floor we're standing on is part of the inner skin of this artificial construct."

"Wait a minute? Mama, you're saying that we're on the inner edge of these artificial lower levels right now?" Hotaru asked, her disbelief now replaced by a look of rapidly growing alarm. "_And that there's nothing below this floor but an empty space with a real black hole at its center?"_

"Yes," the older senshi confirmed. "I sense that that the floor itself is about ten meters thick and incredibly strong. This inner skin extends out to completely encircle the micro black hole at the exact center of the enclosed open space below us, so that its strong gravity pull is exactly equal on every point of the surrounding structure. That makes it a stable configuration, you see?"

"I do, but I still don't wanna believe it!"

"Oh, and one other thing, having a small singularity below us also explains the energy field that's interfering with our ability to sailor-teleport," Pluto continued, after a momentary grin at the sweat-dropping Hotaru's jumpy reaction to what she had just been told. "The energy field responsible for this is being projected out from the entire underside of this inner skin, but enough of it extends upwards through the floor and into the lower level of the moonlet's crust to screw up our teleportation ability. This barrier field, like this inner floor, surrounds the entire core area. In combination, they both serve to reflect the Hawking radiation that is escaping from the North and South poles of the black hole, back down through the event horizon into the singularity again, to keep it from slowly losing mass."

"_Huh?"_

"What I mean is – if the black hole kept losing mass through the escape of radiation, without being able to pull in more physical matter to replace that being lost, it would eventually dissolve away into nothingness and vanish completely. After a sufficiently long period of time it wouldn't exist any more."

"Oh-?" Sailor Saturn scratched at the back of her pageboy bob. "I understand what you're saying…I think-?"

"And I'll bet you it's the Hawking radiation itself that's powering this still operating machinery in here," Pluto added, as an afterthought. She then gestured with her free hand. "See that device over there in the middle of the room? At a guess, that's what the builders are using to do it."

In the exact center of the spacious, dome-shaped control room was a circular, well-like shaft, some ten meters in diameter. Its meter wide outer rim was raised slightly above floor level, and set into its inner edge was a three-barred barrier of some exotic metal. And the whole esoteric structure was capped in its entirety by a transparent dome of what looked to be a protective field of yellow energy.

"That machine that looks like a large well in the floor is almost certainly where a fraction of the Hawking radiation from the poles is being siphoned off to be used as the power source - for this one room, at least – because I can sense the main, blocking energy field isn't active directly under that smaller, yellow energy dome covering the shaft. Any remaining unused energy from that tiny percentage being captured, then joints the rest of the excess radiation in being reflected back down into the event horizon again by the suppressor field. It's almost a totally closed cycle, so this ancient control room still has enough power here to last for millions of years more. And that's why it seems to be still operational, even after all of this time."

"Wow! The 'Space Jockey' aliens sure built things to last," the younger senshi exclaimed, her sense of wonder now coming to the fore.

"Yes, they did." A wry twist came to Sailor Pluto's lips, as she added, "But as fascinating as all of this is from a technological point of view, this discovery we've just made doesn't help us out one little bit with regards to our escaping off this moonlet. Knowing all of this now just reinforces the fact that we dare not try sailor-teleporting out of here back into space. Between this high gravity and the reflective energy field, there's a better than fifty percent chance we'd end up rematerializing down there, inside the event horizon, instead!"

"And then, _'squish!_'" the suddenly white-faced Sailor Saturn mumbled in a very unhappy tone. "Right, Mama?"

"_Exactly."_

"So what do we do now, Setsuna-mama?"

Sailor Pluto gave that very good question some deep thought before finally answering.

"I think it would be best to keep putting as much distance as we can between us and that xenomorph hive behind us." She gestured across the barely lit room, towards the opposing wall. "We should head out through that open doorway on the far side of this room and see if we can't find some stairs going upwards for a change. This course of action also has one other advantage apart from the obvious one - the further we manage to travel back up towards the moonlet's surface, the less this heavy gravity will weigh down our bodies."

_Especially your body, Hotaru-chan_, the anxious Sailor Pluto thought as Sailor Saturn answered in the affirmative, nodding in emphatic agreement to the proposed plan. _And it's not just this heavy gravity tiring you out that I'm worried about, either. At least you managed to have a drink of water before falling down the hidden shaft, but you haven't had anything at all to eat since before we left Earth. You must be getting really hungry by now. And a heavy gravity environment is no place for someone already tired and weak from lack of food._

_Damn it! I have to get Hotaru-chan out of here and to a place with a food source before it's too late! __And if by some miracle we manage to make it off this moonlet alive, i__t looks like the next planet in towards this alien sun is our only chance…unless-?_

_Wait! I know that the yautja hunters eat the meat of animals, and just maybe other aspects of their diet are similar to ours, as well? Judging by the intensity of this battle we saw going on above us, there's bound to be a few other dead yautja scattered around in this maze of hallways. __Maybe I can find a food pack with something to eat in it for her on the body of one of them? And if I do, I just hope that whatever the food is, it's not only edible, but also cooked!_

The worried mother and nervous foster daughter turned to walk towards the indicated second doorway, which was an exact twin of the one they had just entered this control room through, excepting that this second entranceway was wide open, the double sliding doors fully recessed into the surrounding wall. However, even though the dark rectangle of the unlit hallway beyond was clearly visible to the wary eyes of the preoccupied pair, both failed to spot the monstrous black shadow that was wedged in a ceiling shaft just beyond the range of the faint light being emitted from the yellow energy dome, and the few other sparse and scattered illuminations on the dormant machines that ringed the control room.

Or the fast moving ripple in the air as the transparent outline of _something_ moved between the partially open blast doors to their rear, slipping silently into the room behind them.


	8. Chapter 8

_Happy, happy, joy, joy! At long last, an update!_

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**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER EIGHT**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

On board the all but totally invisible yautja scout ship, now operating in full silent mode as it hung motionless in near space less than one hundred kilometers outside the planet-spanning tunnel of thin, cold, high-altitude air, Kujhade grinned mirthlessly at the slowly moving enemy icon on his screen. As the returning hish behemoth made its leisurely way back in from the distant outer moon towards the narrow gap of open space that separated the two Earth-sized worlds of Yaat, it was evident to him that the warship was still totally oblivious to the presence of his much smaller vessel.

Not that the yautja pilot was in the slightest bit complacent about the task he was about to perform. He certainly wasn't expecting to be lucky enough to catch the approaching Battlecruiser with its defensive shields switched off, as its cloaking device currently was. And in regards to this vitally important point, Kujhade wasn't to be proven wrong, because the asteroid-sized enemy vessel had indeed raised its protective force fields as a precaution the moment its occupants had first picked up the faint signals emanating from the distantly orbiting moon. And, even after locating and destroying the yautja surface installation on the outer satellite – which had been purposely designed to look to any attacker like nothing more sinister than a navigational beacon and emergency transmitter – the hish warship's ship's passive defenses remained active. But – considering the type of weapon Kujhade was about to use for his opening attack upon them – that wasn't going to matter one iota.

Kujhade's plan of attack was really quite simple - he knew that neither hish nor yautja energy-defense force fields were designed to stop physically solid projectiles, as this archaic class of offensive weaponry was usually all-but-obsolete for ship-to-ship combat in this day and age. And as to why this was so - as a rule, physical projectiles traveled at a much slower speed than beams from light or plasma based weapons, which meant that they posed much less of an immediate threat, especially to spacecraft in flight. So, should the yautja or hish actually encounter hostile life forms in deep space that still used such armaments, they possessed a big advantage over these usually less-technologically advanced adversaries. Any approaching missile or explosive shell could usually be picked up and tracked by their shipboard _gkinmaru_, and then destroyed easily enough by defensive beam weapons, with plenty of time to spare before any potentially damaging impact.

_Usually._

But this particular case was going to be an exception. For two most pertinent reasons.

Reason number one - it was standard operating procedure for both yautja and hish military-class warships to engage their enemies head-on, in honorable face-to-face confrontations. Because of this, the armor and defensive shields of their capital ships were strongest at the front and sides - the areas that would take the most damage from enemy bombardment. And while the rear areas of these larger warships _were_ still shielded from hostile energy weapon fire, these tail sections were not nearly so well armored as the rest of the ship in question, especially against hostile fire from directly behind them.

The rationale for this seeming design flaw was simple – amongst all of the predator societies, it was deemed highly dishonorable for the crews of military vessels to turn tail and flee from a fight, including against superior odds, whilst there was still the faintest chance of achieving victory. So, should any ship's crew actually attempt to do something so ignoble, the very real prospect of having their main engines shot out by their foes, which would leave the would-be deserters' drifting starship in a very exposed and vulnerable state, was an excellent way to force any potential _s'yuit-de_ (cowards) to rediscover their courage and stand and fight. For, should this actually happen to an errant yautja crew, the miscreants, now with no chance of escape, would then have no choice but to either try to reclaim a fraction of their honor back by either emerging victorious from their pursuers or dying in the attempt.

Reason number two for Kujhade's confidence was that the missile he had launched had a specially designed stealth configuration. It had a very low sensor signature even when being actively searched for – which the unsuspecting hish vessel was assuredly not doing at this moment in time. Furthermore, the cloaked nuke was approaching from directly behind and slightly below the warship. This angle of attack meant that fewer defensive plasma weapons could be brought to bear on it, should it be belatedly discovered on its final approach.

Mere seconds before impact, the engines of the invisible metal dart flamed back into life again, accelerating the now unstoppable missile through the totally ineffective energy shields of its mountainous target at meteor speed.

As the warhead struck home, a flower of flame blossomed out from the impact point and Kujhade's screen momentarily filled with a haloed flare of white light.

As the glow faded, the elated yautja pilot saw that, as planned, the energy shields in that vulnerable area had been momentarily dissipated by the blast of the exploding missile. The protective barriers could reform again at any second – but a second was all that Kujhade needed to deliver his _real_ Sunday punch.

Totally invisible to normal human eyes - though not to yautja eyes - in the airless vacuum of space, a thin shaft of dazzling radiance stabbed outwards at the speed of light from a deeply buried weapons emplacement on the facing surface of the now distant outer moon. Just over one second later, a very high-powered laser beam struck the rear section of hull protecting the engine room of the hulking Battle cruiser. With no active force field now at that spot to harmlessly dissipate the concentrated point of energy, the violet-hot stream of coherent light sliced completely through the entire width of the huge starship as if the multiple layers of tough metal it was encountering were but thin sheets of paper.

Alien klaxons blaring, the enormous warship veered off its plotted course, secondary explosions from ruptured power conducts now silently rippling along that area of the damaged hull, blasting sprays of shattered fragments and swirling clouds of vapor out into the cold vacuum of space. As its anti-gravity field abruptly cut out, the huge, blunt nose of the starship dipped directly towards the looming near hemisphere of the closest of the twin planets. Then the crippled vessel began to fall from its orbital path, trailing a slow-motion trail of smoke, flame, and assorted debris in its wake.

As the hish crews fought to regain control of their suddenly cumbersome vessel and avert a catastrophic nose-dive into the thick atmosphere of the planet below them, the triumphant Kujhade sent a second shot from the giant laser into the damaged enemy warship. But this time the stabbing, infra-red needle of the ultra-hot shaft of light was reflected harmlessly away by the reforming deflector shields as they flickered back on above the jagged-edged, blackened crater that marked the impact point of the stealth missile, and the clean-cut, perfectly circular hole inside that where his first laser shot had punched through the badly damaged hull.

Seeing the lethal beam being deflected, the pilot realized that his window of opportunity had closed. With the battle cruiser's energy defense shields back up again, for him to press his attack now would be pointless. Time for phase two - evacuate the moonlet of the hunters while the hish were distracted by the impending crash of their own vessel into the far side of the closest planet.

As the blip marking the hish warship disappeared down behind the blurry curvature of the right hand side world, Kujhade broke communicator silence. Time to inform M-di-H'dlak of their suddenly vastly improved chances for not only mere survival, but now also glorious victory.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Less than ten earth minutes before the above events transpired, M-di-H'dlak finally succeeded in running down his ooman targets. Even as he slipped silently into the control room behind the sailor senshi, to his surprise, M-di-H'dlak realized that for some reason the diminutive females in front of him seemed to be totally unaware that he was even in their vicinity. He had fully expected enhanced humanoids of their power level to have at least sensed his presence by now, even with their unprotected, unshielded backs to him as they walked towards the doorway in the far wall.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been true. But not in this case, and for a very fortituous reason. Little did the yautja leader know that the suppressor field that was preventing the two sailor senshi from teleporting, was also interfering with their preternatural ability to sense other life-forms, masking his cloaked presence quite effectively from them even at this short a range.

Unless one of the pair should happen to look behind them and notice the slight blurring in the cold air to their rear, of course. M-di-H'dlak resolved not to give them that chance.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the seven-and-a-half foot tall shadow began his silent, deadly advance, only to abruptly stop in his tracks for a second time. For his helmet_ gkinmaru_ had suddenly flashed red, and warning script expanded to fill his vision with both dire and _very_ pertinent data.

Mindful that he had observed two oomans landing on the moonlet, whilst back aboard the starship, the yautja leader had downloaded into his helmet computer not only the data file on Sailor Pluto, but also all available information on her likely companions as well. Because of his foresight, M-di-H'dlak's helmet sensors had managed to identify the other, smaller figure accompanying his intended quarry.

According to his data bank, the current companion of Sailor Pluto was a younger, obviously re-incarnated version of the original dreaded entity known as Sailor Saturn.

Sailor Saturn, the planet smasher.

At that quite unexpected revelation, M-di-H'dlak remained frozen stock-still in mid-step, his reason for doing so quite understandable. The close presence of this particular Death Goddess was enough to give even the bravest yautja warrior pause. For, in ages past, his distant ancestors had witnessed, at first-hand, her grim handiwork, and this knowledge had been passed down through the generations to the present day.

Totally unsuspected by the Lunarians and the Dark Kingdom both, representatives of the yautja race had actually been on site at the time of the destruction of the Silver Millennium, now over ten thousand earth-years in the past. And they had barely escaped the ensuing conflagration as Sailor Saturn had brought that long ago age to its fiery end. Only the fact that the hunting party had been observing at the time from a fleeing starship, which had managed to jump into hyperspace before the blast wave had hit them, had they survived to tell the tale of utter destruction that had overtaken the unlucky planetary system to their rear.

For, just before managing their last-second escape from the shattered environs of the yellow sun of the oomans, Sol, these ancient yautja had seen all of the worlds of Sol atomized, right out to the inner regions of the Ort cloud of cometary fragments, a third of a light year out, which surrounded the now suddenly planet-less star.

Absolutely everything with physical mass inside that immense radius of space had been wiped from existence - every inner planet, every outer gas giant, every moon, asteroid and comet, every life form that ran, jumped, flew, swam, drifted or crawled on every world inside that expanding globe of death. Only the icy dwarf world Pluto, and its four accompanying moons, had miraculously been spared from instant annihilation.

And the miracle of Pluto's survival had only come about because that particular freezing micro-world of rock and ice was the site of Charon Castle. Charon Castle, the home base of the mysterious, little known or understood Chronos, the conceptual God of Time for the entire galaxy.

The very Lord Chronos, whom was also the all-powerful father of Sailor Pluto, his intended prey.

A rising surge of adrenalin shot through his massive body as M-di-H'dlak finally realized, in a mixture of elation and trepidation, that he didn't have just one minor death goddess to deal with – he now had _two_.

Sailor Pluto alone would have been hard enough for him to defeat, but with the even more powerful Sailor Saturn also on the scene…?

…. Hard to believe that such a tiny female humanoid could be a destroyer of worlds. But the yautja databanks did not lie, that was indeed she - albeit in a much younger, pre-adult form - standing right there next to her taller companion.

That being so, these two-to-one odds were, in all probability, now insurmountable, even for him.

_Still, fortune favors the brave - and I,_ _M-di-H'dlak,__ am the bravest of all hunters!_

Behind his cloak of invisibility, the yautja leader grinned mirthlessly, his mind once again made up.

Prestige-wise, confronting these two deadly entities was well worth the risk!

For if he could somehow single-handedly pull this fight off against two such high caliber adversaries, he would instantly join the legendary ranks of the greatest warriors in the history of his race. Once back home on Yautja Prime with irrefutable proof of his unprecedented accomplishment in taking the heads of not just one but _two_ sailor senshi during the course of a single fight, his deeds would be detailed in reverent awe around innumerable campfires for future time without end, inspiring countless generations to come.

Successfully accomplish this one deed, and the name 'M-di-H'dlak' would live forever in the annuals of his race. His immortality would be assured.

'_Shikk!'_

Even as the translucent, bulky outline of the hyped-up predator leader crouched down, massive leg muscles tensed in preparation to spring forward in a silent, deadly attack upon the unguarded backs of his diminutive foes, capricious fate intervened in a most unexpected manner.

Just beyond the open doorway, the sailor senshi had suddenly come to a halt; both tensing up in alarm as the younger one abruptly began shaking her right arm and speaking in a tone that conveyed disgust. Next second, the heat image of the tallest of the pair flung her arms wide and cried out a defensive command of some kind.

And then all hell broke loose.


	9. Chapter 9

_Heyo! Chapter time._

_Gotta publish 'em all!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER NINE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

As Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn exited the ancient control room, neither noticed the lightless ventilation shaft overhead that led up to the next level, or the eyeless terror suspended inside it, leering down at them from only a few meters above their heads.

And then a long string of saliva unexpectedly dripped from the serrated mouth of the alien queen, to splatter down in a viscous string across Sailor Saturn's white-gloved right hand. Coming to an abrupt halt, she stared at the sticky mess with surprise. Then a look of disgust appeared on her face and she began to vigorously shake the offending substance from her soiled glove.

"Mama, what's this yucky stuff-?" she asked her just-as-startled older companion. "It just dripped down on me-!"

_Is that a goblet of spittle-?_ Instantly Pluto became conscious of the mortal peril they were in. _Oh, shit!_

"_Garnet Ball!"_

It was very, very close. Even as Pluto's crackling, red energy shield snapped up into place around the alarmed pair, a ton of angry xenomorph smashed down upon her emergent force field, to slide off the curved surface and impact with a chitin-jarring thump onto the corridor floor in front of them.

"Get back, Hotaru-chan," Pluto cried out as the six-meter tall apparition regained its feet, banging its crested head against the corridor ceiling as it did so. Totally unhurt, the giant xenomorph immediately lunged down at the shocked sailor senshi, both pairs of chest arms scrabbled at the smooth outer surface of the 'garnet ball' in a futile effort to tear both it and them apart.

The vastly experienced M-di-H'dlak was nothing if not prepared for any foreseeable eventuality that might disrupt his attack upon this most dangerous quarry. So, even as Sailor Pluto's force field unexpectedly materialized in front of him, his helmet _gkinmaru_ analyzed the composition of the protective barrier and automatically initiated the proper countermeasure. In less than a split-second, the energy field being emitted by his protective armor had changed its frequency. This had the unfortunate side effect of rendering the hunt master fully visible again, but the fact that his outstretched arms could now penetrate the globe of translucent red energy shielding his prey more than made up for that minor inconvenience.

Even as he leapt forward in his silent, deadly attack, the hyped up predator leader received an almighty shock of his own. The distinctive outline of the xenomorph queen suddenly dropped into his field of vision, her totally unexpected appearance distracting him from making his wrist blade strike on the tallest of the unprepared sailor senshi for a vital second.

Luckily for her and Sailor Pluto both, as Sailor Saturn flinched away from the of the xenomorph bouncing off their force field, she caught sight of the uncloaked predator, in shockingly close proximity to them, out of the corner of her eye. She instantly screamed out a warning.

"_Watch out, Mama! Yautja behind you!"_

The alien queen sprang forward like a nightmarish, dinosaur-sized black grasshopper to the attack once again, just as Pluto was warned by her frantic daughter of the new and exceedingly dangerous threat from their rear. Trusting in her force field to hold the attacking xenomorph off long enough for her to deal with this new enemy, she whirled around, dropping her garnet rod as she flung her arms upwards to grapple with the predator whom was somehow stepping _through_ her activated force field.

This was now a test of brute strength between her and the two-and–a-half meter tall headhunter, with instant death the prize for the loser.

"_Uff!_ I've got this under control, Hotaru-chan," Pluto gasped out, straining to keep the wickedly serrated blades protruding from the killer alien's left wrist from her throat. "You watch that giant xenomorph – _uhh_ – I won't be long here!"

Feeling his wrists seized from below, the predator leader received a second shock. Although not expecting an easy victory by any means, he was taken by surprise at the sheer strength of his diminutive adversary. Unknown to him, Sailor Pluto was many times stronger than a normal human in her senshi form. So it was most disconcerting to see that she was actually preventing him _with one tiny hand_ from completing his wrist blade strike on her! Nor could he strike at Sailor Pluto with his right hand, for it was also being held in an equally powerful grip.

In fact, judging by her iron grasp on both of his now immobilized wrists, she seemed to be either very near to – or maybe even his equal - in physical strength-!

_An Ooman as strong as me?_ _Never!_

Still, even if that unpalatable fact would prove to be true, M-di-H'dlak possessed more than one means to bring down this most tenacious prey. And he didn't even need his hands to do it, either.

The trio of crimson targeting lasers stabbed down from his helmet, locking on the upper body of the most formidable female in his grasp, just below her neck.

_No sense in obliterating that fine trophy skull. Die!_

To her horror, Sailor Pluto saw the pencil-thin laser beams and the stubby barrel of the yautja's shoulder-mounted plasmacaster simultaneously swiveling downwards in a synchronized motion towards her well-endowed chest!

Realizing all-too-well the danger she was in, Sailor Pluto lashed out with her right foot, catching her seven-and-a-half foot tall adversary in the lower stomach with a stamping side kick.

M-di-H'dlak was no raw, untested novice, he was already braced for such an attack. However, the sheer power of the kick unbalanced him for a split-second. And that was all the time that Sailor Pluto needed to exploit her momentary advantage.

Pivoting under the huntmaster's outstretched arms, and bending one thick and muscular appendage up against the other, she pulled off a perfect side throw on her giant adversary. M-di-H'dlak felt himself going off his feet and thrust sideways. As he hit the floor and slid out through the energy wall into the control room again, his plasmacaster discharged a second too late, the plasma bolt striking the ceiling above him in a shower of white-hot fragments.

_C'jit!_

Despite her terror, little Sailor Saturn had somehow resisted the urge to glance behind her to see what was transpiring between her foster mother and the killer alien, instead keeping her frightened eyes and huge weapon leveled on the titanic, skeletal monster in the hallway. As it landed on top of the 'garnet ball' once again, double jaws snapping fruitlessly at its all-but-impervious surface, she stabbed upwards through the energy field with her Silence glaive, its huge, razor-sharp blade slicing into the underbelly of the enormous alien horror. Unable to gain any purchase on the frictionless surface for a second time, the angrily screeching, now injured queen slid completely over the top of the protective barrier, to crash in a thrashing heap onto the floor of the control room to their rear.

Rolling back up onto his clawed feet as the infuriated xenomorph just missed landing directly on top of him, the startled yautja leader took in this new and highly dangerous situation at a glance. Trapped between the towering alien queen and the once more intact globe of protective energy, and with no time to use the twin blades attached to his left wrist, M-di-H'dlak instantly brought into play the fully charged power gauntlet encasing his right hand. Punching upwards with all of his might, his metal-enclosed knuckles impacted solidly into the armored chin of the queen's crested, bathtub-sized head as the hive mother lunged down at him, double jaws agape, the device releasing its concussive charge of stored energy as it made contact.

Despite her vast size, the alien queen was not only brought to a halt by the greatly enhanced impact of the chitin-shattering blow, but was also sent reeling backwards in a spray of acidic blood to crash back first down onto the low platform surrounding the energy dome in the exact center of the musty room. As she did so, her yellowish-green, highly toxic and corrosive blood splashed from her freshly inflicted wounds onto the alien machinery that regulated the siphoned flow of Hawking radiation from the black hole power source at the core of the moonlet.

And, after millions of years of fault-free operation, something finally gave.

As a wise precaution, the outer casings of most 'Space Jockey' technology had originally been designed by their makers in the dim and distant past to be proof against accidental or deliberate contact with xenomorph blood. But, after several eons without maintenance of any kind, a hairline crack had finally formed in the normally impervious casing of the power regulator - a crack just wide enough to admit a couple of droplets of acid.

The protective dome of energy abruptly collapsed, causing the instantaneous decompression of the control room. And a howling gale of cold air immediately began to rush into the now-open shaft, streaming down into oblivion inside the micro black hole at the core of the miniature world!

Taken totally by surprise by the explosive decompression caused by the failure of the dome behind her, the alien queen had no chance of even attempting to save herself. In far less than a split-second, the black armored nightmare plunged from sight and vanished into the singularity, her despairing howl cut off in mid-cry as her acceleration surpassed the speed of sound, then, a microsecond later, reached a fraction under the speed of light.

With no chance to brace themselves against the ferocious current of air, both sailor senshi and M-di-H'dlak were also swept off their feet and sucked into the now exposed shaft like dust motes into a vacuum cleaner. However, their fate was to be far less gruesome than that of the doomed hive mother. Twisting in mid-air even as she was pulled into the yawning opening below her, Sailor Pluto dematerialized her garnet rod and managed to hook an arm over one of the many horizontal bands of alien piping that ringed the inside of the well. She gasped out in pain as the abrupt deceleration of her fall almost pulled her arm from its socket! Then, to her overwhelming relief, she saw that her sailor senshi companion was dangling slightly above and to the right hand side of her own position. Even as she fell, Hotaru had somehow managed to wedge her Silence glaive between a rung and the smooth wall of the vertical duct, and was now hanging on with both hands for dear life to her trapped artifact, her slender body swaying back and forth over the endless abyss below them!

"_Aaaah! Hotaru-chan – just hang on! Use your levitation to help you out!"_

"_But Mama, I can't!"_ Saturn wailed back, terror in her eyes and voice at what was soon to happen to them._ "It's not working!"_

"Try to use it anyway! Our levitation ability won't get us out of this, but it'll help to lessen the g-force on our bodies! Using it, we should be able to hang on for long enough for me to maybe figure out a way for us to get out of this mess!"

"_Uuuh! _Okay, I'll try to…yes, that's…a bit better._ Mama! Where's that big monster gone?"_

"There's no need to worry about it, Hotaru-chan! I saw it fall over the edge and into the singularity below us!"

"_Thank Kami-sama!_ But, what about the yautja? Did it fall in, too?"

"I don't know for certain," Pluto admitted, "but I think that it did as well! If so, at least we don't have to worry about either of them any more!"

But the older of the two sailor senshi was wrong with her supposition of the demise of their second opponent. The once again cloaked M-di-H'dlak was in fact still alive, also clinging tightly to a lower railing, albeit on the far side of the death shaft from his erstwhile prey.

And the yautja was cursing his bad luck. Not so much for his own precarious position, but for the loss of one of his prized objectives. For the alien queen had fallen into oblivion below him. What a waste of a prime, status-enhancing trophy head!

However, it was a huge consolation to the bitterly disappointed hunt master as he just then realized that the two sailor senshi hadn't also plummeted to their deaths alongside the unlucky xenomorph queen. For there they were, on the opposite side of the shaft, several rungs above his own position. Just as importantly, both were seemingly in no imminent danger of being torn from their handholds by the endless gale streaming past them down into the all-consuming singularity below.

M-di-H'dlak felt his spirts instantly rise at the sight of his trapped quarry. He still had an excellent chance to make a very notable pair of kills, after all!

If he could make it up out of the gravitational death trap he had fallen into, of course? And then best them both in combat after that.

Behind his breath mask, M-di-H'dlak's mandibled mouth widened with anticipation. A worthy trio of challenges for him, indeed!

_I shall _not_ fail!_

This far down into the unending shaft, no human could have escaped the relentless pull of the bottomless gravity well. Luckily for him, M-di-H'dlak _wasn't_ human. Massive muscles bulging and straining with the effort, _nok-by-nok_, the hunt master pulled himself back up the rings of pipes, through the rushing torrent of falling air, out of the gravity well, to the comparative safety of the ancient control room above him.

Once he was safely over the top railing again, the all-but-invisible yautja leader spared a look across the shaft at the sailor senshi, both still dangling helplessly over the abyss, hanging on for grim death to their handholds.

With an electronic whining sound, the helmet mounted triangle of targeting lasers for his plasmacaster once more zoomed in and locked on the largest of the pair, the green haired Sailor Pluto. This was a golden opportunity for an easy kill, and a lesser yautja than he would have almost certainly have taken it. But then the hunt master stayed his hand, and for one very good reason.

To a leader of M-di-H'dlak's stature, it would be unsporting to kill a worthy enemy in this manner. After all, any _s'yuit-de_ (coward) could shoot a helpless adversary in the back, thereby avoiding an honorable face-to-face confrontation with hand weapons. And dangerous though both sailor senshi undoubtedly were, there was zero honor to be gained by him by committing such a cowardly act.

Besides, if he fired, his prey would fall, and her prize head would be lost to him. Just like the head of the xenomorph queen had been. To shoot would be to lose a second invaluable trophy.

This was a most unprecedented situation he now found himself in. So, what best to do now?

For a second or two, the confounded hunt master even considered attempting to save both sailor senshi, one at a time, challenging each in turn to hand-to-hand single combat. This would be the honorable thing for him to do, and the better warrior in each death match would be the deserved victor. But before he could come to a firm decision on the practicality of this course of action, he suddenly received an urgent transmission from Kujhade in their fortuitously still surviving starship. The gist of the message was as follows:

_Hish warship disabled, but not destroyed. Adversary is a 'Thei-de-Nagara'–class Battlecruiser. Recommend immediate evacuation of hunting party during this window of opportunity, before the main weapons of the Hish warship come back online and they begin targeting this moon. Request permission to hover at extraction site to re-embark our hunting party._

That last bit made up M-di-H'dlak's mind for him in a hurry. Earlier on in the fierce engagement, he had picked up Hish transmissions from their expeditionary force to their hidden vessel, so with regards to the previously unsuspected presence of his yautja hunting party in the underground labyrinth of tunnels by the Hish mother ship, the cat was now well and truly out of the bag.

Even though M-di-H'dlak was sure that he and his few remaining hunters could dispatch any still surviving remnants of the Hish ground force forthwith, to spend precious time doing so would be to invite their own almost certain death at the hands of the damaged but still partially operational Hish Battlecruiser. And since there was definitely no honor in being massacred by hostile heavy weapons being fired down upon them from space, the best course of action was for them to carry out a tactical withdrawal back to their own ship, while they still could.

Regretfully turning away from the almost certainly doomed Oomans, the frustrated M-di-H'dlak braced himself against the howling gale and set off as fast as he could manage towards the surface again. Even as he powered his way through the endless cataract of doomed air, the huntmaster simultaneously gave his permission for the pickup, and then sent a coded transmission to Guan-thei-de and any other yautja survivors to meet up with him at the access shaft that had been their point of entry. Once back in their own speedy stealth vessel, perhaps they could engage in battle with the Hish once more, this time on more even terms.

And maybe even encounter one or both of the sailor senshi again, as well. If they somehow managed to escape the gravitational death trap they had fallen into, that was. M-di-H'dlak fervently prayed that this would indeed be the case. His currently thwarted plans for a giant leap up to the top of the yautja social scale depended upon it.

Yautja could move _very_ fast when they needed to. In less than two earth minutes, all four remaining hunters had made their way safely to their evacuation point at the base of the narrow shaft they had used to descend into the moonlet's interior. Ten seconds later, the quartet had scrambled up into their invisible ship that was hovering in place over the exit point.

The instant that the four survivers were safely on board, Kujhade gunned the engines, sending the invisible scout ship rocketing skyward once again, the sudden rush of displaced air whipping up another whirling cloud of shattered alien foliage in their wake.

And, as it turned out, they had vacated the war-torn planetoid only just in the nick of time.


	10. Chapter 10

_Whoops! I'm posting this a day later than I intended to._

_So, without further ado -_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER TEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Back above the deeply buried core of the moonlet, things were rapidly coming to a head. Almost five minutes after they had been knocked over the edge of the gravity well that led to the miniature black hole at the exact epicenter of the moonlet, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn were miraculously still alive. But it was equally obvious that neither sailor senshi could maintain their grip on the lower railing indefinitely. Sooner or later the relentless pull would tear them both from their handholds and drag them to their doom.

"_Setsuna-mama!"_ Hotaru cried out in wide-eyed terror. _"My feet feel like they weigh a ton! I – I can't hold on much longer!"_

"That's…because your legs and feet are your closest body parts to the singularity below us, Hotaru-chan," Pluto gasped back though her clenched teeth, fighting to maintain her own precarious grip. "The gravity field is pulling on them with much stronger force than on your upper body!_ Don't give up!"_

"_I'm trying! But I can't last much longer!"_

"You have to! If you do fall, then the tidal forces caused by the sudden increase in the gravity differential will stretch you out and tear your body apart before you even reach the event horizon!"

"_Mama!"_

"_Hotaru-chan! We've only got one chance to get out of this alive!"_ Pluto cried out, her keen mind suddenly hitting on the one option left to them that might still get them out of their terrifying predicament. _"My 'Garnet ball' force field can't save us from that gravity well, but your 'Silent wall' can! Activate it around both of us, right now!"_

"_But, Mama, if I do that, the null-field barrier will break our grip and we'll both fall into the black hole!"_

"I know, but we're going to get pulled in anyway," came Pluto's grim reply. Sweat beads speckled her forehead as she felt her hold on the railing beginning to weaken. Heaven knows how Hotaru was still managing to hold on against the relentless tug that was dragging them both down to their doom. "So your 'Silent wall' is our only chance of survival now! It cancels out everything, including gravity, so there's a good chance that it'll stop us being sucked in! And if we do fall in, it should protect us from being crushed out of existence – well, hopefully, anyway?"

"I'm scared, Setsuna-mama!"

"So am I, Hotaru-chan. But…we have to try this. If we don't, we're both dead for sure! And I don't know if even _you_ can come back and be reborn after falling into a black hole!"

"_Ahh! Mama, I'm slipping! I gotta do it – Silent Wall!"_

Even as Hotaru's fingers slid from the railing, Sailor Pluto clutched at her terrified daughter, losing her own grip on the railing as she did so! But, even as they began to plummet downwards into the gravity well, the impenetrable 'Silent wall' null field snapped into place around them – a split-second too late to prevent their ferociously accelerating fall into the light-sucking, invisible monster at the exact center of the moonlet's core!

Already traveling at only the barest fraction under the speed of light as it passed through the event horizon, the perfectly circular ball of black energy touched the microscopic-sized rotating ring of the micro singularity, itself – and instantly destabilized it!

With absolutely catastrophic results.

In a trillionth of a second, a new white hole was born – and in that terrifying instant, all of the gigatons of compressed mass forming the mini black hole blew out again as a spinning wave of pure quantum energy, the sudden pulse instantly vaporizing the entire moonlet and everything on it into far less than atoms!

On the yautja starship, amidst crackling sparks and swirling smoke as their control panels shorted out from the unimaginably powerful electromagnetic pulse from the titanic explosion, which had hit them at the speed of light, the surviving hunters watched in horror through their automatically darkening main view screen as a newborn sun flared up into existence behind their racing starship, in the exact center of the narrow gap between the sky-spanning planets. Even worse than this, a perfectly circular wave front of pure white, superheated plasma was expanding at a frightening rate towards not only the suddenly brightly lit facing hemispheres of both hapless worlds, but also their now powerless ship. They were all doomed – their ship _and_ both planets - and the hunters knew it. At its present speed, the violet-hot fireball of subatomic energy was going to hit their now helplessly drifting vessel in less than a minute. And with their propulsion and navigation systems down, there was no way they could possibly escape being wiped totally out of existence, just as the trapped moonlet at the epicenter of the titanic blast had been.

But then, a mere second later, a totally unexpected miracle happened. Just before the ever-expanding fireball could engulf the near faces of the trapped worlds and sear both clean of all life, the hungry, greedily reaching tendrils of the all-consuming subatomic conflagration suddenly began to slow their expansion. And then, to the utter astonishment and relief of M-di-H'dlak and his battered band of survivors, the superheated wave of destruction abruptly reversed course, collapsing like a deflating balloon back inwards on itself, shrinking down towards its now vaporized point of origin. Within mere moments, the last of the luminescent energy had winked out of existence, as if the event had never even occurred!

A miracle that the two encased sailor senshi drifting inside the 'Silent wall' at the center of the inferno were also right now becoming aware of, as the spherical space inside their protective barrier suddenly began to fill with the pure white light of creation!

_We're still alive!_ The elated Sailor Pluto silently shouted to the cosmos, her face a study of both utter relief and joy. _If we were going to die, then it would have happened by now! My plan worked - Sailor Saturn's barrier held against the black hole!_

_But…what's happening now? I'm glowing! What the-? There's some type of heatless energy flowing through the 'Silent wall' and into my body! But – that's impossible! Nothing can get though the silent wall barrier – nothing!_

"_Mama?!"_

"Hotaru-chan? What's the – _oh?"_

_Kami-sama! Hotaru-chan is absorbing the energy, just as I am! And is she – somehow changing because of it? No, that can't be right – can it?_

"_Hotaru-chan! _Don't panic, it's all right," Pluto hurriedly reassured her frightened daughter as they hugged each other tight. "Don't ask me how, but our bodies seem to be automatically absorbing all of this zero-point quantum energy that is somehow getting though your barrier! It should have killed us instantly, but the reverse is true, I can feel that it's powering us up instead!"

Sailor Pluto was about to say more, but just then, a deep, commanding voice suddenly spoke directly into her mind.

"_Children of the Galaxy cauldron, I grant thee both the power of thy destiny."_

"_What?_ Hotaru-chan, did you hear something just then?"

"No, Setsuna-mama. What was it?"

"For a second, I thought that I heard…a voice…"

"_A voice? In here with us?"_ Sailor Saturn squawked. _"Who was it?"_

"I'm not sure. But…it sounded a lot like my father, Chronos."

"Ch-Chronos-dono, the God of Time?"

"The very one. But I must have been imagining things…!"

_Or was I? That _was_ my __Otōsan talking to me__, I'm sure of it! But why would he make contact with me, right here and now, unless…he somehow already knew that all of this was going to happen-?_

It was right at that second that Hotaru finally accepted that they both were in fact going to live.

"_Mama, we're still alive! We survived falling into a black hole! It's a miracle!"_

"No it isn't, Hotaru-chan," the older girl declared, her own heart still hammering at just how close they had been to oblivion. "It's the laws of physics in action," she then explained. "Your 'Silent wall' is the ultimate nullifier, remember? It succeeded in canceling out even the crushing gravity of that micro black hole, and even though the energy released somehow managed to penetrate your force field, it was in a form that we could absorb safely…" Sailor Pluto then grinned sheepishly, the expression on her face betraying her own relief at having unbelievably escaped from certain death. "_Ah-heh._ Actually, Hotaru-chan, you're absolutely right. There's no other word for our continued survival _but_ 'miracle!'"

_Yes, a miracle - one granted to us by not only Sailor Saturn's 'Silent wall', but also by my father, Chronos. I'm absolutely sure of that, now! And I think I know the reason why…but first-things-first-!_

"Now that this energy flow into us seems to have stopped, it's time we thought about getting out of here," Pluto then remarked, trying hard to keep the perturbation she was now feeling at her mysterious, all-powerful _Otōsan's_ actions out of her voice.

"Yeah, let's go! But how do we know that it's safe for me to drop the 'Silent wall', Setsuna-mama?" Sailor Saturn anxiously wanted to know, more than a touch of fear in her tone at the thought of dissolving away the defensive globe of black energy that had saved their lives. "If I do that, and that micro black hole is still outside, we'll be dead before we even realize our mistake!"

"Easy. For one thing, I don't think that the micro black hole we fell into even exists anymore," the older girl replied, feeling absolutely sure about the truth of her statement. "That energy discharge we both absorbed had to have come from _something_ exploding, and it can't have been just the moonlet itself blowing up, or anything like that. That's because if the moon we're on _did_ suddenly blow up for some reason and the black hole at its core was still functional at the time, its gravity would have instantly sucked all of the released energy and matter in our immediate vicinity through its event horizon and out of existence, before the energy could have had time to penetrate your 'Silent wall'."

"Oh? That's true," Sailor Saturn nervously conceded, obviously still not fully convinced as to the wisdom of dropping her shield. "I guess?"

"But, just in case I'm wrong about the both the moon and the black hole we fell into at its core having been destroyed, now that we're shielded from the effects of the black hole containment field by your 'Silent wall' and it's no longer interfering with our ability to sailor-teleport, we'd best both jump a few dozen miles away from our present location, back into normal space," Pluto then suggested. "By doing that, we'll reappear well clear of both this moon and the gravitational field of the black hole – if they both do in fact still exist, of course - and we can take a look at the situation from there. Just drop your 'Silent wall' once we've safely teleported."

At her words of advice, a rueful grin appeared on Sailor Saturn's youthful face, and she relaxed back to her normal self. "Oh, yeah? I should have thought of that myself…! Let's do that right now!"

And so they both did.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Once they had rematerialized back into normal space at a safe distance away from their previous location, the lost sailor senshi took stock of the situation. With no great surprise, Sailor Pluto saw that she had been right after all. The small planetoid they had been trapped inside had vanished as if it had never even existed. And of the space-distorting gravitational field of the micro black hole, there was no sign at all, either.

The world-connecting tunnel of thin air in their vicinity had utterly vanished as well, severed and consumed by the unimaginably violent and thankfully temporary emergence of the small white hole. But the air bridge at least would reform in time, as the gravitational fields of its parent worlds performed their almost zero-gee magic upon the now fiery and smoke filled twin atmospheres to either side of them.

"So I was correct with my assumption after all, Hotaru-chan. The micro black hole and the moonlet have both been totally destroyed. And so Chronos-Otōsan really _did_ use the vast energy trapped in the black hole to power us both up."

"Yeah, Setsuna-mama, you were right! But how did Chronos-dono know we would be here, at this particular planetoid at this particular place in space and time?" Saturn asked, staring with wonderment at her foster mother. "I mean, there are millions of solar systems in the galaxy, aren't there?"

"Because he's _Chronos,"_ Pluto patiently explained. "Even enhanced as we both are now, he's still as far beyond us as we are to the ants scurrying at our feet back on Earth. And since my father is the omnipotent God of Time, nothing of past or future events can be hidden from him if he truly wishes to know about them. It would be child's play for Chronos to foresee our appearance at this location in the near future, and set his plans accordingly."

"_Waaa?!_ So you're saying that Chronos-dono knew all along that we would come here, Mama?" Hotaru gasped out in query, her wide eyes reflecting twin pools of bright light from the alien sun. "And so he set up this trap for us to stumble into, to test us out, and then reward us for passing it by granting us a power upgrade?"

"Something like that, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto agreed, a thoughtful expression now on her face. "And at least a couple of good things have happened to us because of it," she then pointed out, her voice containing a noticeable tone of relief. "For one, when we absorbed all of that quantum energy inside your 'Silent wall', even though you physically look to be the same as before we were trapped, it somehow evolved your physical body from your normal human form into your immortal, Sailor Saturn form. Which means that you no longer need to eat and drink physical food to survive, just like I don't have to. Two, I also somehow know that you now possess full conscious control over not only your pre-existing abilities, but also the full powers of the adult Sailor Saturn, as well."

"What?" A look of utter astonishment appeared on the young Sailor Saturn's face at what she had just heard. "I have my _full_ powers right now," she gasped out. "As in _full cosmic powers?_ Are – are you sure about this, Mama?"

"I'm_ absolutely positive,_ Hotaru-chan," Pluto quietly confirmed. "I've had time to scan you, now, and this I know for a fact."

"But, Setsuna-mama, I was told that us sailor senshi could only access our full abilities after our twenty-first birthday?" Sailor Saturn persisted, disbelief still on her face. "And in your current incarnation, not even _you_ are fully powered up yet, for that reason!"

"Well, in this particular case, it seems that Chronos has made an exception for you. And for myself, as well."

"_He has? You have your full adult abilities right now, too?"_

"Yes. My mind's eye informs me that my own sailor senshi space/time powers have now been amplified by at least the power of ten – and maybe even more than that. In fact, with regards to raw power, I'm almost on a par with _you_, now."

"_Wow!_ Then, that means…?"

"Hold on. Before you get your hopes up, Hotaru-chan, unfortunately, I sense that I _still_ can't open space/time warps or sailor-teleport further than I could before our incarceration, more's the pity," Pluto hastened to add, having noticed the hopeful expression transforming her young companion's face. The green haired beauty let out a wry chuckle as Hotaru's face fell again at the bad news, then she added by way of explanation, "As to why this is still so, I suspect that my father, Chronos, has placed mental blocks in my mind that prevent me from accessing my pre-existing ability to travel long distances through space-time, other than by comparatively short range teleportation, that is. He's also blocking _your_ adult ability to do the same, as well. I can only surmise that he still doesn't want it to be too easy for us to return home to Earth?"

"_Awww?!_ Darn it all," Hotaru wailed. "We get all super-powered up to the max, and we _still_ can't get home any faster! Then what's the point of making us stronger if it won't help us find our way back to Earth?!"

"My _Otōsan _doesn't arrange premature power enhancements just for the fun of it," Pluto answered her daughter, a slight frown on her brow as she realized that there was even more to their situation than she had at first thought. "There is one other thing that I'm now absolutely sure of, and it is that we've been granted our full powers for a reason, Hotaru-chan. And I've got a strong suspicion that we're definitely going to need our enhanced abilities at some point during the next stage of our journey towards the galactic core."

Sailor Saturn gulped nervously at her older companion's alarming observation, and she clutched her Silence Glaive even tighter. "You mean – we could be heading into even _greater_ danger than what we've just been through, Mama?"

"Yes, Hotaru-chan. That's _exactly_ what I mean. So we'd both best be very careful out here from now on. Even as strong as we both are now, we're certainly not safe from everything that we may meet this far out in deep space. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but over the years, I've heard rumors of nightmarish things lurking in some distant corners of our galaxy that make these xenomorph monsters and the yautja we've just fought look about as dangerous as key chain plushies!"

"_Uwahwah!_ Setsuna-mama!" Hotaru wailed. "D-don't scare me like that! I'll never be able to go to sleep ever again worrying about it!"

"Sorry, Hotaru-chan. But since our upgrading, you don't even _need_ to sleep now, if you don't want to," the Sailor Scout of Time reminded the anxious looking teen. Then she reached forward and grasped her adopted daughter's white-gloved left hand in firm reassurance.

"With regards to what we may or may not run into on our journey back to Earth, there's no use in worrying about things that may not even happen."

"Yeah, Setsuna-mama, I guess that you're right," Hotaru conceded, perking up a bit again. But then another thought struck her, this one of more immediate concern.

"Hey, Mama, do you think that there's any of the yautja still left alive after the moonlet blew up? Maybe some of them managed to escape back into space again aboard their spaceship before the explosion? They could be hiding somewhere nearby, just waiting for a good chance to attack us again!"

Pluto frowned, then closed her eyes and concentrated for a second or two, carefully scanning the surrounding regions of space.

"Yautja are hard to pick up even for us when they're cloaked, but I can't sense any in the immediate vicinity of us, or anywhere else in the surrounds of the twin planets, either, Hotaru-chan," she finally replied. "Still, I can't tell you for certain that there weren't any survivors amongst them. Because of the chaotic sub-atomic after-effects of the abortive white hole eruption, even with my enhanced powers of perception, the region of space between and surrounding these planets is still too disrupted for me to be able to register any life forms at all at the moment, let alone one or two surviving yautja."

"But if there are any still alive, do you think that we'll have any more trouble from them?"

"It's hard to say, Hotaru-chan. Under normal circumstances, they'd regard us as prize trophies, so I'd have to say 'yes'. But now that we've absorbed all of that energy from the white hole, we're _much_ more powerful than we were before. From what I know, yautja are brave but not suicidal. So if they now consider us to be way out of their league, they'll probably give us a wide berth from now on."

"Whew! That's a big relief, Mama!"

"Yes, it is to me as well. Come on, there's no reason for us to hang around here any longer, so we'd best be on our way." Then something that her foster daughter had mentioned earlier to her popped back into her mind. "Hey, do you still want to visit that water world nearer this star?"

"Oh?! Yes please, Setsuna-mama," Hotaru enthused, forgetting her earlier trepidation as her thoughts switched back to the enthralling prospect of swimming in a warm ocean under the beneficent golden rays of the brightly shining alien sun. "We may be super, super-powered now, but that's no reason why we still can't go and have some fun on our way back to Earth, is there?"

Setsuna laughed, successfully managing to conceal the trace of unease in her voice from her adopted daughter. "None, indeed, Hotaru-chan. Come on, we'll make the jump to the planet right now."

_I sense that Hotaru has indeed been granted her full adult powers, but her persona seems to be unchanged from before_, she then silently told herself_. So that means she is mentally still only the thirteen-year-old teenage girl that she was before we fell into my father's trap, not the adult Sailor Saturn... Damn! That brings a whole new set of problems for me to deal with._

_I'd best keep an even more careful watch on her now. Without the mature Sailor Saturn's guiding mind, Hotaru isn't ready to shoulder the responsibility of her newfound cosmic abilities yet, and even worse, Chronos has granted them to her before she's had any training at all in their proper use! Being the Sailor Senshi of Time, I already knew beforehand what my full abilities were going to be, and how to use them to best effect. But Hotaru in her teenage form doesn't…!_

Pluto shuddered involuntarily as ancient memories of their previous lives, now thousands of years in the dim and distant past, suddenly came flooding back into her anxious mind.

_The Sailor Saturn that I knew before, at the time of the Silver Millennium, was even more powerful than I was back then. She could blow away _an entire star_ with ease! There's no getting away from it, at the first chance I get, once we travel into an unpopulated sector of deep space, I'm going to have to give Hotaru a crash course in control of her newfound abilities._

_Thank god that it's me out here with her, now, and not one of the others! Hotaru and I are by far the most powerful of all of the Sailor Senshi of our solar system, so even if we both were back on Earth and not lost in deep space, I am the only one of our group with the knowledge, the ability and the raw power to train her in what she _has_ to learn now, too. And now that I am in possession of my own full cosmic abilities – except that I still can't travel through time, thanks to the will of my father, Chronos – I am close enough to Hotaru on the cosmic power scale to prevent her from doing anything too destructive – I hope? There's no telling the damage she may inadvertently cause to the fabric of space-time if I don't teach her to suppress her power – and the sooner I do just that, the better!_

_And if I fail, and Hotaru _does_ lose control of her power…? Well, for the safety of any inhabited planets we may come across on our journey home, I might have to trap and freeze my daughter in her human form inside a time-stasis field and tow her back to Earth that way._

_Darn! I really, really hope it doesn't come to that!_


	11. Chapter 11

_Yes, it's _that_ time again! All-righty, here's -_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER ELEVEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Sailor Saturn had been right to suspect that some of the yautja had survived the conflagration. From the safety of his cloaked ship, now some twenty thousand kilometers away from the departing sailor senshi, M-di-H'dlak and his surviving hunters were at that very moment watching this most remarkable pair of oomans drifting upwards at an ever-increasing speed through the gap between the planets towards open space. Soon the duo had exited the quickly reforming tunnel of air that would soon once again connect the two miraculously spared worlds – if you didn't count the fierce wildfires now raging amongst the smashed and flattened remnants of the once towering forests in the almost zero-gravity areas that had been closest to the now totally vanished white hole, of course.

With what he had just personally experienced and seen, the troubled yautja leader had a lot to turn over in his mind. And his uneasy thoughts weren't just on their miraculous escape from certain death, either. With regards to that close call, luckily, the emergent white hole had expanded into existence for only a few short seconds. Any longer and the titanic energies it was unleashing back into the universe would have engulfed and utterly destroyed not only their scout ship, but also both of the planets of Yaat, and then probably the large outer moon, as well. That alone was disturbing enough, but as to what had reversed the expansion of the searing plasma itself-? It was almost as if the radiance had been pulled back by and absorbed into the sailor senshi at the epicenter of the blast…!

No, such a feat was utterly impossible. To do that, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn would have to possess the ability to manipulate primal zero-point energy on a cosmic scale. And while the yautja race knew of one or two nearly omnipotent higher life forms that could indeed do such things, no sailor senshi that his race had yet encountered had the ability to do so – well, the sailor senshi that they knew of, anyway.

And yet, all of that unleashed energy had to have gone somewhere? One thing was certain; the explosion had _not_ been reabsorbed by the singularity at its epicenter somehow reforming. The starship's now active sensors told him without a shadow of a doubt that there was no mini black hole existing now in the space where the inner moon had been.

Which meant…?

…Could it really be possible that the sailor senshi _had_ somehow absorbed all of that primal energy into their bodies? Having done so would certainly help to explain why the oomans were now radiating enormous amounts of life-energy, albeit at frequencies beyond the range of unaided human vision. To yautja eyes, however, both sailor senshi were glowing like miniature suns in bipedal form.

A moment or two later, the _very_ troubled eyes of the hunt master jerked back to the _gkinmaru_ screen as the sailor senshi abruptly teleported away into the endless, star-splashed void. However, the huge alien wasn't too worried about the sudden disappearance of his singular targets. He could now track the strangely enhanced pair easily enough – even after their hyperspace jump - by the aforementioned and very distinctive aura of pure energy each was now continuously radiating, which would act as twin homing beacons to the ultra-sensitive long-range scanners on his ship.

Yes, these two exceptional oomans would _definitely_ bear watching.

-:-:-:-:-:-

A second later, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn rematerialized back into normal space, fifty three million kilometers sunward, and at no great distance away from their new planetary destination.

Upon first impressions, the planet now spread out before them seemed to be midway in size between the planet Mars, and Earth, but one glance was all that it took for both travellers to realize that this world was far different from either of those two familiar worlds inhabiting their own native solar system.

"This isn't a water world, as such, after all," Sailor Pluto remarked with some surprise to Sailor Saturn, as both scanned the hazy reaches of the slowly rotating globe with their keen senses. "Those oceans and seas that we can see under that brown and yellow cloud cover do contain water, Hotaru-chan, but they also contain much more than just a trace of ammonia and various other petrochemical substances as well! It looks to me like this entire planet is just one big liquid hydrocarbon reservoir!"

"Wow! You're right! What a place for oil companies to come to, Setsuna-mama! If this planet was in our own solar system so that they could actually do it, of course?"

Pluto grinned at the remark. "That's true. They'd make a fortune. As to what else I have already deduced about this little world, it seems to be very similar in a number of ways to Titan, the biggest moon of your own planet, Saturn, Hotaru-chan. Only this planet is a fair bit bigger than Titan, and being closer to its star, a lot warmer as well. I sense that its atmosphere is similar to that of Titan, too, but a lot warmer and denser. The air is mostly comprised of nitrogen and methane, with a lot of water vapor mixed in as well, but there is barely even a trace of free oxygen."

"So it's not breathable by ordinary humans, Setsuna-mama?"

"No, it's not. Hmm? I can also feel a strong magnetic field surrounding this planet, which is keeping its dense atmosphere from being depleted by the solar wind from the sun. That means it must still have a molten core and be tectonically active." A trace of puzzlement then entered her voice as she added, "But even so, energy from the central sun should have converted most if not all of that free atmospheric methane into more complex hydrocarbons only a few million years! I wonder why it hasn't-?"

"In a nutshell, what you're saying is that this place is obviously not habitable by humans or animals like those on Earth," Sailor Saturn chimed in, her disappointment clearly evident on her face and in her voice tone. "So there's no-way we'll be going for a swim down there, after all, is there, Mama?"

Sailor Pluto managed a second genuine smile. "In a sea of water-diluted hydrocarbons? I wouldn't recommend doing that, Hotaru-chan! Of course, it wouldn't do us any physical harm to splash around down there while we are in our sailor senshi forms, and nor would the poisonous atmosphere affect us since we don't need to breathe at all now. But the senstation of doing so would be rather – oily and icky – wouldn't you say? Not to mention the smell, which would be somewhat overpowering to say the least!"

"Yeah," Sailor Saturn agreed with feeling, eyebrows raised and a frozen sweat drop on her forehead at the thought. "Sniffing petrol and methane fumes – _yuck!_ Let's just go, Mama. I've changed my mind about going down there now!"

Pluto laughed at the grimace her daughter was giving her.

"All right. And since we won't be having a swim, there's no point in us checking this place out for any other reason now. Certainly not to find food for you, anyway. Now that we've both been granted our full abilities, you no longer need to eat or drink, just like I don't have to, remember?"

"Oh, yeah? That's right," Sailor Saturn thoughtfully replied, a look of relief replacing the one of distaste on her flawless face. She let out a relieved sigh. "Lucky! At least I'm not in constant danger of starving or dying of thirst now."

"Of course, we both can still eat physical food if we so desire," Pluto reminded her companion, her mind still probing the hazy, yellowish-brown world's secrets even as she talked. "But even if we were still looking for a physical meal, I can't sense any life forms down there at all, not even on the bacterial level. And even if there is some form of life existing in that hydrocarbon brew, it wouldn't be edible to us, anyway. So it looks like we'll both just have to remain solar-powered for a while yet, doesn't it?"

The young Sailor Saturn mentally chuckled, and then grasped her mother's free hand with her own.

"Yeah! Well, I suppose we'd best start off for home again, Setsuna-mama. Are you ready to go right now?"

Sailor Pluto gave her daughter's much smaller gloved hand a reassuring squeeze. "Yes, I am. How about you, Hotaru-chan?"

"I'm ready, Mama."

"Good." She gestured with her Garnet rod. "That bright star right there is our new target. Okay, then…s_ailor teleport!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

As mentioned before, the yautja had got their ship's _gkinmaru_ back on line just in time to track the subspace jump of the sailor senshi to the next planet in towards the central star of this alien solar system. For a tense few minutes, the yautja leader thought that his targets had teleported out of the solar system entirely. But then his long range sensors registered two brightly glowing spots of life energy flaring back into existence above the nearest of the two inner planets orbiting sunward of their own location.

M-di-H'dlak sighed with relief. The teleportation of Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn to the inner planet would have been instantaneous – the delay in reestablishing contact with them had been caused by the length of time it had taken for the energy they were both radiating to travel at the speed of light back across the intervening interplanetary distance to his own now far-distant position. Luckily, in addition to the now functioning sensors, the power to the main engines of their battered starship had by now been successfully restored as well. As there was still no sign of the hish warship, M-di-H'dlak immediately gave the order for the yautja ship to break orbit from above the badly scortched twin worlds of Yaat and set course at flank speed towards the oomans at their new sunward location.

But before the racing yautja ship could arrive on the scene of the sailor senshi's reappearance, the pair had teleported away again. And this time there was absolutely no sign at all near the inner planet of the two godlings that he had been tracking - or anywhere else in near space for that matter. Neither of the sailor senshi was now registering on the ship's _gkinmaru_, right out to the far limit of the sensitive instruments not-inconsiderable sensor range.

Space was empty. The elusive sailor senshi were well and truly gone this time. And now that the pair had vanished from his instruments, they had this entire galactic spiral arm – over one hundred thousand light years of largely uncharted space - to lose him in.

"_Pauk!"_

M-di-H'dlak slammed his fist down with annoyance onto the solid metal bulkhead next to his seat. There was nothing else for it. With his ship's long-range subspace communicator irreparably damaged and therefore permanently out of action because of the electromagnetic pulse caused by the abortive flare-up of the white hole, he no longer possessed the means to communicate over interstellar distances with Yautja Prime. Which meant that they now had no choice but to return to their distant homeworld with all due haste. Once on planet, he would immediately warn the Council of Elders of his discovery of not only the two Earth-based sailor senshi in this sector of space, but also of the Hish presence here, as well. And after that – hopefully – he would receive orders to proceed onwards with a vastly stronger expeditionary force to the distant planet Earth, to cut off the potential threat from the oomans at its source.

_Permanently_.

-:-:-:-:-:-

_**Author's Note:**__ Next chapter, prepare for a new (and incredibly cosmic) story arc._

_I'll be you aren't expecting what's going to happen in the next few chapters._

_See you all in seven!_


	12. Chapter 12

_Hi again, readers. And awa-a-ay we go! Right into:_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER TWELVE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

_The time__: Nearly one earth month later._

_The location__: Almost two hundred light-years closer to the Galactic core, in a black gulf between unknown star clusters._

An eternity of darkness and emptiness reigned supreme in this particular lonely region of deep space. Nothing stirred here in this vast, trackless waste between the scattered star clusters, save the occasional molecule of gas or random dust particle. Once in a while, a larger lump of rock or ice would make a fleeting appearance, slowly tumbling along on its endless journey through infinity.

And then – something totally unexpected happened. Two flickering pillars of light momentarily appeared in the black void; solidifying a second later into the ebony silhouettes of a pair of very familiar, sailor-suited shapes, drifting together through the emptiness.

As soon as she and Sailor Saturn had materialized back into normal space, Sailor Pluto's Garnet crystal at the head of her talisman winked on, bathing both in a gentle red glow of projected light. Not, it soon proved, that there was anything at all to see out here in the black abyss, save each other.

Then little Sailor Saturn telepathically spoke up, confusion on her face and in her tone as she glanced about her at their new, obviously unanticipated surroundings.

"Setsuna-mama? Where are we? The stars are so faint! And where is the red dwarf star we were heading for? I can't find it anywhere!"

"What? This can't be right – we should have reappeared within a few billion kilometers of its position," that worthy responded, a puzzled frown on her forehead as well. "Hold on, I'll look for it myself…"

"It's just not there, Mama," Saturn insisted. "In _any _direction!"

"Well, this is unexpected. And you're right, Hotaru-chan. Not only does the red dwarf star seem to be beyond the range of our perception, those distant star constellations we can see are totally different from the ones that should be surrounding us right now," the now worried looking Sailor Pluto finally confirmed to her much younger companion, the tone of her thoughts betraying her surprise and uneasiness at what she was seeing. "Somehow our planned sailor-teleport to the next star out has sent us way, way off course! And as to where we are right now, I think that we're way out in the open void between star clusters, _dozens_ of light years away from where we should have arrived back into normal space!"

"_What?_ But how could that have possibly happened, Setsuna-mama?" Sailor Saturn anxiously inquired, suppressing a shiver of apprehension at the sheer strangeness of what had just happened to them. "Even by combining our power, we can't jump a fraction of that distance through space! If what you say is true, then we must have gone _way_ beyond the star we were aiming for!"

"I don't know, Hotaru-chan. Maybe some natural phenomena, or even someone - or some _thing_ - amplified the power of our subspace jump so that we deliberately ended up way out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"But – but, who would do such a thing to us?" Hotaru asked, her eyes huge with unease in the dim light. "And why?"

"There's no need to sound so alarmed, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto reassured the fretful teen, her own uneasy expression fading as her mind registered that the area surrounding them, right out to the limits of her senses, was totally devoid of any other life forms of any description – even on the virus level. "I can sense that we're totally alone out here in this empty region of space. Chances are, what happened to us just now was most likely an accidental occurrence that was totally natural in origin."

_I hope?_ She added under her breath.

"'_Whew!'_ If that's so, then that's a relief, Mama." The red-lit form of the teenage Sailor Saturn visibly relaxed, and then she began to glance around through the black void surrounding her with building curiosity instead of fear now on her face. "So…where do we go to now?" the teen inquired in a dubious tone. "We're so far away from all of those just visible stars and star clusters! From this distance, most of them are so faint and packed together that they look like clouds of luminous, multi-colored mist!"

"I'm not certain as to that, yet," the disconcerted Pluto admitted. "So, since we're not in any immediate danger from anything, I'm going to try to pinpoint the nearest star or star cluster to our location," she then added in a businesslike tone, turning her attention back to the vital task at hand. "Once I find it, we'd best head in that direction. It may take us twenty or thirty sailor-teleports to reach the star in question, but we'll make it there eventually."

As aforementioned, this far out in the pitch-black gulf between the unfamiliar stars, the darkness was nearly total. Only the red light emitting from the huge gem on Sailor Pluto's Garnet Rod enabled Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn to see each other clearly as they both drifted together through the near absolute-zero temperature, all-enveloping nothingness that stretched on for at least fifty light years in every direction. Every direction, the intensely concentrating Pluto then realized, bar one…

"Setsuna-mama, I'm beginning to get hungry," Hotaru suddenly complained in a plaintive tone. "I feel all drained of energy, way out here in this cold, distant place."

"At least, since Chronos-Otōsan powered us up, we _both _now don't need to eat physical food any more," Pluto reminded her, now focusing her senses on the sole stellar object that she had managed to locate in their immediate neighborhood. "Remember, we can draw all the energy that we need from only sunlight, now, Hotaru-chan. So at least you won't starve to death out here – wherever here is?"

"But there isn't much starlight way out here anyway, Setsuna-mama! The very nearest star must be dozens of light years away from us. And I'm hungry for the taste of _real_ food, not just solar energy!"

"Don't worry, little one. And you're wrong about the distance to the nearest star. See that bright yellow star off to the left of me? It's only three light years away, and even from way out here, I can just sense that it has at least two _really big_ gas giant planets circling it. They have to be large for me to be able to pick them up from this distance. And where there's two planets, there should be more."

"Oh, yeah, now I see the one you're talking about," Sailor Saturn exclaimed in a much happier tone of voice as she peered in the requisite direction, which was directly behind her. Her face reddened slightly as she added, "_Heh-heh_. _Um_ - I was facing the wrong way to notice it before, wasn't I?"

"Yes. Now concentrate your senses on it, Hotaru-chan, and tell me what you think."

"Hmmm? Let's see now - hey, that star is a 'G' Class sun, just like our own one back home is! There is no spectral difference between the two of them that I can tell. So we're definitely going to go that way to check it out, Mama?"

"Yes," her foster mother affirmed. "We certainly should sailor-teleport in that direction and see what we can find. Maybe we'll even be lucky enough to find an inhabited world that will be able to offer you at least something that vaguely resembles earth food?"

"Ewww, _Yuk!_ What do you mean, _'vaguely resembling'?"_

Sailor Pluto laughed at the expression on Hotaru's dimly lit face. "Come on! Hold my hand and we'll go."

-:-:-:-:-:-

The lonely, slowly rotating planetoid was little more than a frozen rock with a scattering of dust and ice on it, orbiting at nearly Oort cloud distance from its isolated parent star, but it served as a handy observation platform for the two lost sailor scouts. Twin pillars of light briefly flared upon its dim surface, to be replaced a second later by two very slender and feminine humanoid forms, one tall, and the other much shorter. And also less patient.

"Are we there yet?" Hotaru wanted to know, tugging at Setsuna's near arm. "Hey! That star still looks to be really tiny from here!"

"Not yet, Hotaru-chan. And that is because we are still at least a third of a light year out from it. We'll jump in at a slight angle from the star itself this time, I can feel the presence of a sizeable planet orbiting in that direction."

Their second jump was much more successful. As she and Sailor Saturn materialized back into normal space, Pluto noticed with satisfaction that the central star was much closer and brighter than before. Furthermore, just to the right of their new position loomed the gargantuan, dimly lit, bluish-green crescent of a small gas or ice-giant planet, surrounded by a partially visible, nearly vertical plane of icy rings, the bands glowing with faint white luminescence in the weak sunlight. And nor was the far-flung giant entirely alone in majestic solitude. It was being orbited by at least one large, visible moon, and several distant, slowly moving dots marked the various paths of a few other smaller ones.

"Hmm. With those faint rings, this planet looks a bit like the ice giant, Uranus, in our own solar system," the surprised Sailor Pluto telepathically mused to her companion. "It's almost the same size and color as Haruka's planet is, too. Only, those surrounding rings are at a more normal angle of inclination. But that's a bit of a coincidence, finding a planet so similar to one of our own way out here."

"Hey, Setsuna-mama, do you think that maybe we somehow really _are _back in our own solar system right now?" Sailor Saturn burst out excitedly, staring at the majestic blue, ringed marble below her and badly wanting to believe that, by some sort of miracle, they had arrived in the vicinity of their much missed home star. "That planet really does look like Haruka-papa's one! Do you think that it could it be possible that the wormhole created by Chronos-dono merely sent us around in a big circle, or something, and dropped us off again close to our home worlds, after all, without us even realizing it? Maybe we weren't on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy after all, but only about two hundred light years away from home?"

"I'm afraid not, Saturn-chan," Sailor Pluto replied sadly. "The central sun here is pretty much indistinguishable from our own one, but if what you just said was true, I should be able to sense my home world of Pluto and it's big moon, Charon, from this close to our home star. And can you sense your planet, Saturn, anywhere near here?"

"_No,"_ Sailor Saturn groaned out after trying hard to do just that for almost twenty seconds. "But that planet there looks so much like Haruka-papa's planet, that for a moment I was hoping-?"

"Sorry to disillusion you, Hotaru-chan. This definitely isn't Earth's solar system, I'm afraid. But the news isn't all bad, because I do sense several other smaller worlds here, closer in to the star. An asteroid belt, as well."

"Can you sense any signs of life here yet, Mama?"

"No, not yet. As a matter of interest, that big moon below us does possess a thin atmosphere of sorts. But even if there are any life forms down there, they almost certainly won't be sentient. We are still about six billion miles away from the star itself, so we are too distant from it for any normal humanoid life to naturally exist this far out. Some types of Faerie life excepted, of course."

"I want to go further into the system and check out the inner planets," Hotaru declared, now focussing her attention on the region of space close in to the dazzling central sun. "Maybe there's a world like Earth there? I think that there's one planet maybe ninety million miles out from the star, but since it's directly in line with the sun in front of us, I'm not sure. The radiation from the sun is mostly blocking it out from me."

"Good spotting," Sailor Pluto congratulated her young charge. "There is an Earth-sized planet there, and it seems to be located right in the center of this star's habitable zone, too. Your senses are getting much better now, with practise."

"Thanks, Mama. And I…sense one more planet as well, even closer to the star than that, I think? Are there any other ones here, do you know?"

"Yes, there are. Apart from the two big gas giants that I found before from deep space, and this smaller blue-colored ice giant right here, I've spotted a fourth one, another gas giant, about three quarters the size of Jupiter. It's orbiting further in from this one, but at present is situated on the far side of this star. One more much smaller planet is orbiting inside that one – it's a heavy rock and iron world about seven times the mass of Earth, I'd say. This one is probably the other planet that you found, Hotaru-chan, but it's certainly not habitable by humans. A normal person landing on it's surface would be squashed down and have to crawl everywhere because of the extreme gravity. The last world that I can sense is very, very close to its parent star, and it's big – twice the mass of Jupiter, at least! I wouldn't want to visit its surface, either, it would be like landing on the sun itself."

"So, that's two outer, very big gas giant planets, one smaller one, the ice giant here, one heavy rocky inner world, one smaller rocky planet, and an inner hot giant planet," Sailor Saturn repeated, ticking them off on her fingers. "For a grand total of seven new alien planets that we've discovered."

"Correct. And six of them won't be of any use to us at all."

"But what about the seventh one, the Earthlike world that I sensed," Saturn asked, eyes bright with curiosity. "Does it have an oxygen atmosphere and oceans? Has it a moon? I can't tell from way out here! Can you, Setsuna-mama?"

"We'll be finding out soon enough, child," Sailor Pluto remarked, glancing back the way that they had come, and then stiffening with surprise at what she saw. "But first - look!"

Sailor Saturn stared off in the direction of Pluto's pointing Garnet Rod. Then her purple eyes widened again in astonishment. Rapidly approaching their position in deep space was a massive, greyish coloured, metallic mountain that could only be a spaceship of some kind – and an interstellar one at that!

"_Wow! It's big…!"_

"I don't think that vessel is a warship," Sailor Pluto declared, concentrating her full attention on the behemoth. "I'm not picking up any hostile emanations from inside it. But if it is built for war, something that big might just be able to do even us some real damage. So be on your guard, Hotaru-chan, just in case."

-:-:-:-:-:-

Aboard the huge starship, the presence of the two lost sailor senshi had not gone unnoticed by its otherworldly occupants.

"_Observation: Two life Forms dead ahead. Observation: Both Life Forms are radiating heat and seem to be comprised of enormous amounts of pure energy. Conclusion: Extreme caution advised."_

"What? Two life forms are floating unprotected in open space? Now, who could they possibly be, I wonder? I didn't know that any 'I' Class Beings are residing in this isolated solar system. Bioputer, identify said organisms."

"_Affirmative. Genotype: 'Humanoid Sailor Senshi'. Designations: unknown. Origins: unknown. Purpose here: unknown. Power levels: Larger one: 'I/G' Class. Smaller one: 'G' Class. WARNING! 'G' Class Organisms' dead ahead. Taking evasive action now."_

"_God Class?"_ the ship's designated controller gasped out, multiple eyes widening with shock. "Here, in this system? Why? Could they possibly be here because they know what is going to happen in our vicinity soon?" After a moment's thought, the creature quickly came to a decision. "Bioputer, quick, get me into contact with them! _Priority One!"_

"_Action Requested: unwise," _came the monotonic reply. "_Reason: 'G' Class Organisms are unpredictable. Action Advised: move behind the nearby ice giant planet, engage quantum drive and approach the target world from the far side of the system."_

"What? And miss this chance to talk to them? Bioputer, cancel that emergency escape scenario and do as I said. Establish a line of communication with them, right now!"

"_Orders received. Actions Taken: Now establishing contact via telepathic link. Multilingual Translator on. Precautions taken: Blast Shields on maximum in case of retaliatory energy feedback. Quantum drive coming on line for immediate escape if required."_

"Thank you. Right…_um?_ This is Controller One on the starship _Ark II_ calling Unidentified Beings. I humbly request the pleasure of your attention. I wish to speak with you, for information purposes only. We are not hostile. I repeat, we are _not_ hostile."

"Wow! They're speaking to us like we do to each other," Hotaru enthused, looking surprised and delighted at hearing in her head the message from the huge ship, both telepathically and in Japanese. "And they're being pretty polite about it, too."

"Clam down, Hotaru-chan. The crew of that vessel are probably worried about just why we're here," Pluto replied. "I'd best put their minds to rest."

"This is Sailor Pluto calling Alien Ship," she immediately beamed back. "My companion, Sailor Saturn, and I mean you no harm. We are merely passing through this solar system on our way back to our home world. We shall not harm you or that planet orbiting in this star's habitable zone ahead of us."

"Whew! That's good to know. And they actually deigned to talk to me," the controller sighed out with relief, after receiving the reply from the taller of the unknown godlings. "What luck!"

"_Further Information Deduced: probable physical age of both entities – less than thirty orbits of the inhabited planet ahead. The larger deity is older than the smaller. Conclusion; they are both extremely young for 'G' Class entities, probably little more than children. Speculation: the larger one may be a parent of the smaller, and therefore overly protective of it. Conclusion: I repeat - extreme caution in both words and deeds strongly advised."_

"Duly noted. New Message to entities, invite them to join us on board this ship. We shall convey them to the planet that is our destination, if they so wish."

"_Action Requested: unwise. Reason: 'G' Class Organisms_ _have the capacity to destroy this ship by their mere presence. New Action Advised: politely ask them to join us at the planet ahead if they so wish."_

"Not likely," the controller argued. "From what we were just told, they are both strangers here, like us. And if the power that they are radiating is registered approaching that inhabited planet ahead of us without our calming presence having already arrived there first, the population could quite possibly panic at the mere sight of them. They are both 'G' Class after all."

"_New conclusion: Controller's logic undisputable. Action Taken: invitation to entities being transmitted. Invitation sent. Defensive Precautions now also taken: All inner shields on maximum power, emergency escape pod under controller's chair activated."_

"Thank you, Bioputer. One other thing - how long is it until our other, expected guest arrives?"

"_Answer: approximately ten minutes, give-or-take a few milliseconds."_

"So they want us to join them on board?" Sailor Pluto remarked to her little companion after receiving and acknowledging the transmission from the intelligences on board the giant starship. "And they're apparently going to the planet that you wanted to find out more about, as well. So what do you think, Hotaru-chan? Do you want to catch a lift with them?"

"Yeah! But ask them if they have any _'Nihon Soba'_ in there. I'm starving for some noodles!"

"Somehow, I don't think that they're going to have any Japanese food on board, Sweetie. Hold on, I have just received our jump destination co-ordinates for inside the ship. Take my hand again, and I'll teleport us both there."

-:-:-:-:-:-

_**Author's Note:**__ Next chapter, get ready for several uexpected crossover characters, including the first mention of - _him.


	13. Chapter 13

_Heyo! This chapter, surprises abound. Including - well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER THIRTEEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Using only the barest fraction of their sailor teleport ability, the two sailor scouts jumped directly to the coordinates that they had been given on board the vast ship. They materialized in mid-air inside a large, open space with a luminescent, dome-shaped ceiling that resembled nothing so much as a giant, crystalline lattice. As the sailor scouts drifted slowly down to the to the radiant floor, they noticed bright chains of multi-coloured light and exotic symbols speeding back and forth through both straight and curved channels engraved into every surface. When they both had touched down, Sailor Pluto noticed with surprise that they were in fact standing about two inches above the softly glowing floor, and that the occasional ripple of bluish light would flicker almost imperceptibly through the shimmering expanse at their feet.

_Hmmm! That's a powerful force field encasing the inside of this room. Maybe the crew of this spaceship don't fully trust our good intentions…or maybe they're just taking precautions against any stray effects from our powers if we decide to use them for some reason? We might accidentally damage their ship if we were to do so, so I guess that this force field is really nothing for us to worry about - well, not yet, anyway-?_

"Sailor Pluto," Sailor Saturn warned her, pointing to the rolling shape of one of their hosts as the being rapidly approached their position. "Someone's coming. Gee, what is it? He looks really funny!"

"It's an alien of some sort, Hotaru-chan. Be polite now, and I'll see what he, she or it wants. Then, maybe we can get you some food?"

"I hope so, Mama. I'm starving!"

"Welcome, Sailor Pluto, welcome, Sailor Saturn," the controller greeted the two travellers with enthusiasm and a healthy measure of deference in his synthetic sounding voice, coming to a stop at a respectable distance away from the wary looking pair. "I am Controller One. And as ridiculous as this query of mine may sound to beings such as yourselves, is there anything that I might get you to make you more comfortable before our other guest arrives?"

_Other guest?_ Sailor Pluto silently mused, staring at the very strange shape of their host with curiosity. _Someone else is arriving here as well as us? Interesting…!_

"As a matter of fact, there is, Controller One," she replied audibly, trusting that her hosts' built in helmet translator could handle the complexities of her native language without too much trouble. "My young companion, Sailor Saturn, desires some real, physical food and water, something with a taste suitable for human physiology. Do you have anything edible on board this ship that might fit that requirement?"

"Yes, please," Saturn enthusiastically agreed, licking her lips with anticipation. "I'm quite hungry."

_What?!_ The controller thought to himself, raising three of his jointed arms and scratching his head armor. _They want physical food?_ Controlling his surprise with an effort, he answered politely through his voice synthesiser, "Pure water will not be a problem. And we do have Matter Reconstructors on board. They can provide most types of food that any passengers on board this ship might reasonably need, especially the humanoid types that you both seem to resemble. What sort of food, exactly, would you like to consume?"

"Some hot, buckwheat noodles!" Hotaru spoke up, clapping her hands together with glee. "A large bowl – no_,_ sorry, make it _two _large bowls!"

"I do not require any food," Sailor Pluto stated. "But I would like some green tea, if it's available?"

"I want some green tea, too," Saturn eagerly added. "Please?"

"Ah – all right… Please tell me exactly what planet those delicacies originate from, and the Bioputer will send the required molecular data to the Matter Reconstructor. Your food and drink will be ready within a very short period of time – provided that the planet you name has a culinary file in our database, and the ingredients required don't have _too _exotic a molecular makeup, of course."

"The food and drink that we requested comes from the island country of Japan on the planet Earth, third planet out from the single 'G2' Class sun in the solar system of Sol. This solar system is situated in the Orion spur of the Perseus spiral arm of this galaxy, about 26,000 light years away from the galactic core. That particular spiral arm is presently located on the far side of the Galactic core, directly opposite to our position here."

_So they both originated on a planet called 'Earth'?_ The alien mused as he relayed the required information on to the Bioputer._ I've never even heard of it. But I bet that our guest that chartered this ship would have…and the Bioputer should know about their planet, too – I hope?_

"Excuse me, Sir," Hotaru spoke up with curiosity, as they waited for their refreshments. "Are you a robot or an alien? What planet do you come from?"

"Despite my appearance, I am an organic life form. I am a Radius from the planet Orbella. Our planet is a very flat, high gravity world with no significantly elevated topography."

"Huh?"

"That means that the Controller's home planet has no high hills or mountains, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto whispered to her. "The gravity of his world is probably too intense for them to form."

"You are correct. My world is situated in the Coal Sack Nebula, and circles a red dwarf star, so the planet is very dark even during the daytime. Consequently, I can see in the infrared spectrum quite well."

"Hmm? Then this light in this spaceship must be quite blinding to you?" Sailor Pluto guessed.

"Yes, very perceptive of you. I have automatic darkening lenses built into this environmental suit that I am wearing so that I can see without eye strain in the _Ark II,_" the being informed them.

The Controller had been correct in his assumption with regards to the vast memory banks of the _Ark II_ having specific knowledge of Earth. Instantly, the Bioputer located that particular world's data, found the required culinary information and transmitted it at the speed of light to the waiting food machine. After a wait of only a couple of minutes, two metallic trays containing bowls of steaming _'Nihon Soba'_ and green tea floated into the large, shining space in which the two diners waited in patient – and in one case, very eager - anticipation for their refreshments from home.

"That was quick! Here you go, Hotaru-chan. Don't you forget to say, thank you, now."

"Thank you, Mister Controller! _Yum! Yum!_ Look, Setsuna-mama, I've even got chopsticks to eat my noodles with!"

"Thank you, Controller One," Sailor Pluto said, smiling at the sight of the hungry Hotaru flying into her repast. The older of the Outer Senshi sipped at her cup of tea, and sighed with satisfaction at the delicate flavor of her very much missed favorite drink. She then turned her attention back to their alien, but still recognisably incredulous-looking host as he watched her small companion eat with all three of his eyes.

"In answer to your unspoken question, Sailor Saturn here is very young, and she still likes the taste of the food from our home world. Understand, in our current forms we can exist on pure energy alone, and do not require physical food or drink at all. But we both do still enjoy its taste, as you can clearly deduce from her actions."

"I see…! And is she your child, then?" the being politely inquired.

"Yes, and no. I am one of her two mothers."

'_Two mothers'?_ The alien thought to himself. _What strange beings these 'G' Class travellers are! I wonder how many fathers the youngest has? Two? Three? None?_

But, before he could satisfy his curiosity, the loud voice of the Bioputer interrupted their conversation.

"_Announcement: Imminent arrival of our charter passenger. Time of Arrival: Now. Location of New Arrival: Living Space Two. Power Level of Passenger: Confirmed as High 'I' Class. Special Requests from Passenger: None. Request: Controller One, please return to Control Room. Reason for Request: New data for evacuation of planet received from Charter Passenger."_

"Thank you, Bioputer. I shall be returning shortly. Sailor Pluto, Sailor Saturn, you are cordially invited to meet our new arrival, at your convenience, of course. I am sure that he and you will have many things to discuss?"

"Thank you. I have already sensed his location on board your ship," Sailor Pluto replied politely, taking another sip of her drink. And that was no lie – she _could_ feel the presence of the new being whom had just arrived on board this huge ship…a presence that felt so incredibly old and wise that she felt for a moment that she could almost have been in the vicinity of her father, Chronos, again.

_Yes, I must find out who it is! _She told herself with excitement. _A creature as seemingly wise as this one must surely know the shortest way for us to get back home – and maybe even be able to take us straight there!_

"I regretfully inform you both that I now must return to my station," their alien host informed them. "Please feel free to move about and explore _Ark II_ on our way to the planet. Goodbye for now."

"Thank you for your hospitality, Controller One," Sailor Pluto formally answered him. "Sailor Saturn thanks you as well."

At her guardian's words, Hotaru nodded and waved. She even managed a slight bow, despite her mouth still full of a large scoop of the delicious noodles.

As the controller rolled off towards his destination, Sailor Pluto drained the last of the green tea out of her cup, then turned back to Hotaru and laid one white-gloved hand on the left shoulder of her companion.

"Are you just about finished with your meal now, Hotaru-chan?"

"Yes, Setsuna-mama. I'm full now, and it was delicious! I've just got to drink the rest of my cup of tea and I'm done."

"Good. Once you've finished that, I want to go and check out the other passenger on this spaceship."

"I can sense that he's nearby, as well. He's strong! Can you tell if he's human, like us?"

"No, I can't. But I do feel that it's well worth our time seeking him out. But whoever he is, he's old, Hotaru-chan. _Very, very old."_

Hotaru laughed. "Maybe it's Santa Claus? After my meal, I feel like all my Christmases have come at once!"

Setsuna chuckled at her girlish enthusiasm. "Food _and _presents for you, all in one day? I don't think that you're going to be _that_ lucky, child! Come on, let's go find our mysterious companion."

-:-:-:-:-:-

Tracking down the mystery passenger didn't take Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn very long at all; their enhanced senses led them both directly to his location. But as they flew above floor level into his room, both sailor scouts slammed to a halt in mid air and their eyes widened in astonishment at the sight before them.

Fully encased in a large, totally sealed container of what looked to be glass, was a gigantic, wrinkled, human-like head! Tentacles that resembled hair flowed down behind the brown-colored, lined face, ending in football-sized brown pods that lay on the pedestal base of the huge capsule. The bizarre looking inhabitant within the sealed environment had obviously known of their coming, for as they appeared, the capsule spun around on the glowing floor and glided silently towards them.

"_What the-?" _Pluto exclaimed, dropping back down onto the glowing, force field protected floor once again, such was her surprise at what she was seeing.

"_Setsuna-mama, what is it?"_ her just-as-startled daughter gasped out.

At that very second, Sailor Pluto had a revelation. She had heard of such a being only once before, and that was long, long ago...!

_Now what was its name? Ah, now I remember! _

_"Konnichi wa,"_ she greeted aloud and with a slight bow, the very ancient, benevolent-looking visage as his habitat came to a smooth stop before them. "Aren't you – _The Face of Boe?!"_

"Yes, I am. And you are Sailor Pluto, the Daughter of Chronos, and your companion is Sailor Saturn. I welcome you both." The voice of the ancient alien was very deep in tone, but mellow…wise, but gentle. His soothing tone put both wary sailor senshi immediately at ease; somehow they both instinctively felt that the strange creature floating serenely there in front of them could be trusted in both word and deed.

"Thank you. I have heard of you before. You can travel through time like I can." _Or rather could, _Pluto silently added. "And even though I missed meeting you at the time, thousands of years ago during the time of the Silver Millennium, I heard that you visited the Moon Kingdom to attend Queen Serenity's Coronation."

The huge face smiled at the memory. "Yes, indeed I did. Was it _really_ that long ago? Because I travel through both space _and_ time, to me that happy occasion seems like it only happened a few short years ago."

"But how do you know who _I _am, Boe-sama?" Sailor Saturn asked, still staring at their bizarre host with wide-eyed disbelief. "We've only just met!"

"I am The Face of Boe, Little One. Therefore, I know."

"I think that's in all probability true, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto remarked to her incredulous companion. "The Face of Boe has apparently existed since the beginning of time. He's an immortal, the oldest living being in our galaxy, if not the whole universe. What he doesn't know isn't worth the knowing."

"If that's true, then…then can you tell us the way home to the planet Earth?" Saturn inquired hopefully, her violet eyes no less huge after that revelation. "You know, _Earth_, with Japan and the Pacific Ocean, and-!"

"Yes, I could," Boe confirmed. "I could even take you there. But I won't."

"_You won't? Why not?"_ Hotaru wailed in dismay.

"Because Chronos, the God of Time, does not wish me to do it. I know that, too."

"_But-?"_ Sailor Saturn began to protest.

"It's all right, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto interrupted her plaintive daughter, masking her own disappointment with an effort. "We can find our way home without Boe's help."

At her reassuring words, the Face of Boe actually smiled. "Yes, no doubt you can, Sailor Pluto," he agreed. _"Eventually."_

"All right, you know why _we_ are here," Sailor Pluto stated, eyeing the massive head in front of them with interest. "But why are _you_ here, Boe? This can't be just a coincidence."

"Very perceptive, Sailor Pluto. And you are right; it's not a coincidence. Something big is going to happen in the vicinity of this solitary yellow sun, very soon. I am here with the transport ship _Ark II_ on a rescue mission."

"A rescue mission? What, exactly, is going to happen here? Is that planet that I sensed in this star's habitable zone up ahead of us in some sort of danger?"

"Yes. But I foresaw this occurrence too late to do much more than dispatch this ship to save what percentage of the populace that I could. _Ark II_ has been loaded with a cargo of matter transporters. This ship is here to convey this equipment to the doomed world ahead of us, set them up on its surface, and beam up as many of the population as we can to store as bio-energy aboard _Ark II_. Then we shall escape from this solar system with our precious cargo once the imminent demise of their world is upon us. Once we reach the uninhabited planet of refuge in a distant solar system that I already knew of, the percentage of the population that we have managed to save will be beamed down to its surface, rematerialized into living, organic beings once again."

"So the inhabited planet ahead of us is going to be destroyed," Pluto declared in a grim tone. "But you haven't told us how, yet, Boe. What's the cause of the coming disaster? A massive asteroid strike causing an extinction-level event, maybe? Or is the star ahead of us going to go nova?"

The Face of Boe smiled bleakly back at her. "No, on both counts. But the fate of this unlucky world will be just as final as if it had been caused by either of your two examples. Now, as to the real cause of the coming calamity…have you two heard of, by any chance, the _'Eater of Worlds'?"_

Sailor Pluto felt all of the blood drain from her face. _"Oh, Kami-sama…!"_ she whispered to herself, almost falling to the floor as her long, shapely legs suddenly felt incapable of supporting her weight. _"Not him…?!"_

"_What? Who is the 'Eater of Worlds'?"_ Saturn cried out in alarm, her frightened gaze darting back and forth between her shocked guardian and the impassive Face of Boe. _"Mama, what's the matter?"_

"_It's… Galactus…!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

_**Author's Note:**__ Yes, you _DID_ hear that right. Next chapter, the build-up to - well, let's just say the probable end of the world, shall we?_

_(or maybe not?)_


	14. Chapter 14

_Tah-daaah! It's:_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER FOURTEEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

On board the interstellar starship _'Ark II',_ the two lost sailor senshi had just been the recipients of some _really_ bad news.

"So…just how many people are on the world ahead of us that Galactus is going to consume?" Sailor Pluto quietly asked the enigmatic Face of Boe, composing herself with an effort.

"Approximately two billion," came the sobering reply. "But they're not people as you know them. The race native to the planet ahead is not even vaguely humanoid in appearance."

"I…see. And how many of this alien race do you estimate that you will be able to save with your matter transporters and this ship?"

"Less than ten percent," Boe admitted. "If I had arrived earlier, I could have rescued almost the entire population. But this world is so remote, it took too much time for the _Ark II_ to arrive in its vicinity for that desirable outcome to now be possible."

"Then…it's up to us sailor senshi to buy you some more time," Pluto declared, grim resolve in her voice. "We're somehow going to have to either stop Galactus outright, or slow him down for long enough to give you the time to evacuate as many more of the populace as you possibly can before he arrives on-planet!"

"So you intend to face him, Sailor Pluto?" The Face of Boe stated, rather than enquired. "And you, too, Sailor Saturn?"

"Yes, if we have to," Pluto confirmed, pale-faced but resolute. "Why don't you accompany us, Boe?" she then suggested. "No offence intended, but with you as ancient as you are, surely Galactus knows of you?"

"Yes, he does," the elder being confirmed. "We have even momentarily conversed in passing on a few rare occasions. The last occasion was quite recently, a mere million years ago."

"So you and this Galactus – _um_ - person are friends, then?" Saturn hesitantly asked. "So why don't you just have a talk to him and convince him to leave the world ahead of us alone? Surely he'd listen to _you?"_

"No, he wouldn't. Know this, Galactus has no friends as such, only beings that he notices. Because I am a member of the very highest rank of 'I' Class life forms, I am highly enough evolved for Galactus to register my presence, that's all," the Face of Boe solemnly explained. "And while I can teleport and create wormholes through space and time, I am a being of pure intelligence, not raw physical power. Physical combat is not and never has been my _fortē_. Furthermore I also know of the real purpose for the presence of Galactus in the universe, and therefore I cannot and will not attempt to stop him from consuming the life force of the planets that he needs – including this one. Being who and what I am, Galactus in turn knows this about me, and therefore he does not hinder me from saving what I can of the inhabitants of the worlds that he has targeted."

"Oh…? Um, I'm sorry, but what is this 'Class Ranking of life forms' thing you were talking about just then?" Sailor Saturn inquired, her pretty face wrinkled with puzzlement at what she had just heard. "That's something they _definitely_ never taught me at Mugen Gakuen School. Could one of you please tell me what it means?"

"Yes, you should know about that and its significance to you," Sailor Pluto agreed. "Considering that you are near the top of that very list now, Hotaru-chan! Would you like to do the honors, Boe? You could explain it clearer than I can, I think."

"Very well," The Face Of Boe agreed. He swivelled slightly to face the younger sailor senshi, whose face was now a study in attention, and began his lecture.

"Sailor Saturn, with regards to intelligent potential, all life in the galaxy is classed as follows. Lowest of all are the 'A' class; they are basically animal or mobile plant life, both types without even the slightest glimmering of intelligence or reasoning power."

"Second lowest are the 'E' class – semi-intelligent animals without the functioning digits or brain power to evolve further. Species like these are unfortunately stuck in an evolutionary dead end, incapable of reaching their full potential."

"One step up from the 'E' Class is the 'P' class – pre-technological primitives. They possess both the ability to comprehend and reason, and functional hands capable of manipulating their environment, but have developed little or no advanced technology as of yet."

"'T' class intelligences do have true technology, including air travel through their own atmosphere, atomic power, and the ability to take their first steps into outer space. The people of the solar system of Earth are 'T' class, at present."

"'S' class are next, they have the ability to travel beyond their own planet and even solar system to visit other nearby stars. These races usually have other more powerful energy sources than merely basic atomic power, such as antimatter and cold fusion."

"Now we are starting to get into the really interesting area. Next on the rankings are the 'I' class - beings who are either naturally or artificially immortal. Most Kami and Faerie races fall into this category, as do a select few of the more advanced biological and machine spacefaring races. And also, incidentally, the Lunarians of the Silver Millennium from which you are both descended. 'I' class beings use either advanced technology and/or powerful magic. I am the oldest biological living creature in the galaxy, and I have also been ranked high 'I' Class for that reason – even though my breadth of knowledge approaches that of the 'O' Class."

"The so-called 'Gods' are next, the mighty 'G' class beings. They are usually individuals, but occasionally entire races can evolve into this state of grace. 'Gods' are beings of immense power that can travel through space without the aid of technology, and bend time, space and the laws of physics at their whim. There are not very many of them, but, as you doubtless know, Sailor Pluto, your father, Chronos, is one. In fact, he is ranked 'G/O' – both God _and _Omnipotent. Power-wise, I sense that you, too, are right now on the lower border of the 'G' classification – one step up from me."

"Last of all, at the top of the heap, are the 'O' class – the very few, awe-inspiring Omnipotent life forms. Their knowledge is practically limitless; the power they wield is measured on the Cosmic Scale, and their life spans are that of the universe itself. And - unfortunately for us - Galactus is one of these select few."

"So you are saying that Galactus is even more powerful than my father?" Sailor Pluto gasped out, her face registering her utter astonishment at that most unexpected and very disturbing revelation. "I didn't think that could be possible!"

"Well, sometimes the distinctions between the different classes are not as clear-cut as I have made them out to be," the Face of Boe replied. "The 'G' class does overlap with the 'O' class in that both classes have the ability to naturally use zero-point energy. So, some few 'G' class organisms such as Chronos can be as powerful as the Omnipotents, but there are not many others amongst them with quite _that_ degree of clout. Both Chronos and Galactus are also conceptual beings, so they are very similar in that regard, also."

"I should also inform you that normally Galactus doesn't even register beings that are below 'I' class. They are totally beneath his notice, like an ant would be to you. But he _will _notice you, I think, Sailor Pluto. Since you now possess _almost_ your full power, from our scans, we rank you in the very top 'I' class – but also lower 'G'."

"So…I'm really _that _powerful, now," Sailor Pluto whispered in astonishment. "Even before my Otōsan powered me up, I already knew he had ordained that after my twentieth birthday I would naturally reach my full potential anyway. But I certainly wasn't expecting to receive quite as much raw power as this from him!"

"But – but what about me?" the wide-eyed Hotaru asked their bizarre host. "How do I rank on your scale?"

"You are the Destroyer," the Face of Boe grimly told her, rolling his huge eyes to face the smaller girl. "Physically you are fairly weak, but your full, unleashed power – is definitely 'G' class."

"_Wowww?!"_ Hotaru gasped, shocked by the sheer scale of her now also fully realized potential. "So, you're saying that Setsuna-mama and I _kick ass on the cosmic scale?!"_

"'_Ahem!'_ I wouldn't have used quite that vernacular, but, yes."

"_Whoo-hoo! We rock!"_

"Well then, Boe, if Galactus won't listen to you, it looks like it's up to us two fully powered up sailor senshi to save that planet up ahead of us. We've spent almost all of the last month of our travels practicing to try to come up to speed with our new cosmic abilities. And right now is where all of that training has to pay off. So, with the powers that Sailor Saturn and I now possess, do you think that we both together actually have a chance of stopping Galactus from consuming that world?" Sailor Pluto asked the huge, floating head, newfound hope shining from her red eyes.

"No," Boe told them simply. "But he will talk to you. And you may – if you are lucky – be able to slow him down long enough for _Ark II_ to evacuate a much larger percentage of the inhabitants of this world we are heading for than would otherwise have been the case."

-:-:-:-:-:-

_The time__: Two Earth hours later._

_The location__: Above the __imperiled__ inhabited world named Midway._

In the blackness of near space, one thousand kilometres above the cloud-wreathed atmosphere of the blue-green globe floating serenely below them, two sailor-suited feminine figures hovered hand-in-hand in geo-synchronous orbit, waiting for…_him. _One was tall and slender, the other short and slender, but both were exceedingly beautiful of face and form – and also about as powerful as it was humanly possible for two individuals to get.

Despite the sheer raw power that they now could command, the mother-and-daughter pair of outer senshi were exceedingly nervous about the frightening - and in all probability, fatal - confrontation that would soon come. Despite her very real anxiety, Sailor Pluto kept her beautiful face impassive in an effort to impart confidence to Hotaru, who was looking more and more jumpy as time wore on.

"Sailor Pluto?" Sailor Saturn suddenly asked her older companion.

"Yes, Saturn-chan?"

"What exactly does Galactus look like? He's not a horrible-looking _m-monster_ of some sort, is he…?"

"Well, that depends," Sailor Pluto explained. "Being a force of nature, Galactus can look like whatever the species that sees him, perceives him to be. But, to us, he will probably appear to be a giant humanoid, almost thirty feet tall, with a large helmet on his head. This helmet has two flat antennae, one on each side, and it extends down over the top part of his face in a mask that surrounds his glowing eyes."

"Oh. Galactus is a humanoid, then?" Hotaru breathed out a silent sigh of relief. "Well, despite his size, he doesn't sound too bad?"

"_No," _Pluto corrected her. "To our eyesight, Galactus just looks that way to us. He's not even remotely human. And be forewarned, Hotaru-chan. Despite both of us fortuitously now possessing almost our full cosmic powers, we are still _by far_ the underdogs in this imminent confrontation. The power of Galactus is beyond anything you have ever experienced before – or will ever experience again, should you survive our coming encounter with him."

Hotaru shivered, and grasped her guardian's hand even tighter for some badly needed comfort. Then, as she looked around nervously, the sailor-suited teen almost jumped out of her outfit _and_ her skin at what she saw solidifying into normal space, off to the left of their orbital position. A huge humanoid form with a large, bald head and impassive face was staring intently at them from only a couple of kilometres away!

"Sa-Sailor Pluto? _Look! There's a strange person over there! Is it Galactus…?"_

After a startled glance at the huge, shadowy newcomer, Pluto's face relaxed with relief as she realised whom the bald-headed giant in the toga-like outfit must be.

"No, Sailor Saturn, that's a Watcher," she then reassured her jumpy daughter. "I have heard of them from my father, Chronos. They are 'O' class, like Galactus, but they only appear when an event of cosmic significance is about to happen. No doubt he's here to see what the result of our battle with Galactus will be."

"_But will the Watcher help us against Galactus?!"_

"No. They never interfere. _Ever_. He's only here to watch."

-:-:-:-:-:-

Half an hour later, both outer senshi were still waiting patiently. But all things must come to pass for those who wait long enough…

Sailor Pluto was the first of the pair to detect the massive energy signature as something pulsed back into normal space a few kilometres further out from their position in geo-synchronous orbit above the hapless world below. A split-second later, Sailor Saturn felt it too.

"_Sailor Pluto! Is that-?!"_

"Yes, Sailor Saturn. It's Galactus. He's finally arrived."

"_What do we do?!"_

"Nothing for the moment. We can't visually see Galactus yet, only sense his presence out there somewhere. We'd best stay right here for the moment, and wait until we are sure what his intentions are going to be. Maybe he might just move on of his own accord?"

"Oh, no!" Saturn cried out, concentrating hard and picking up an ominous sign. "Galactus has started to move closer to the planet! Mama, he _is_ going to destroy it!"

"Well, I think that we've just got our answer, Saturn-chan," Sailor Pluto sighed with resigned apprehension, then her head jerked upwards as she spotted a moving shape right off at the edge of her exceptionally keen vision. "I can actually visually see Galactus now, too, and he's coming our way. All right, let's go! We'd best cut him off at the pass."

"I can see him now, as well! Setsuna-mama - _I'm scared…!"_

"I am, too, Hotaru-chan. But this is something that we have to do. Are you ready?"

"I…think so…?!"

"Good. I'll go first and try to talk to Galactus. You wait here, and if it looks like he's going to ignore me, or keep moving towards the planet, you jump in and join me in front of him, okay?"

"I understand. I – I won't let you down, Sailor Pluto. _I won't."_

"Good, Hotaru-chan." The older sailor scout smiled encouragingly at her diminutive companion. "We both have to be brave here. All right…!" Sailor Pluto took a moment to compose herself, raised up her garnet rod, and then called out, _"Sailor Teleport!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

As the massive shape of the Eater of Worlds descended slowly towards his next place of sustenance, he thought of little but his ever-present hunger. This sector of space was vast and totally uninhabited – except for this one, tiny, blue-green oasis of life circling the 'G' Class sun ahead. This star, known as Midway to those few individuals and races that had heard of it, had the only inhabitable planet for nearly a hundred light years in any direction. It was also the only planet that held sufficient life force to interest him in that vast region of surrounding space, hence his presence here.

Galactus also knew with certainty that the elder being known as the Face of Boe was presently on the doomed planet below, but that was of no concern to him whatsoever. The Face of Boe was doing what that enigmatic ancient always did – saving the lives of mortal creatures, as was his wont. The Face of Boe would not try to interfere with his work, and would leave the planet before it was destroyed, as he always did. So all was well and proper.

There was a Watcher here, too. That was of no importance to him, either. They often made an appearance when he destroyed worlds. Like the Face of Boe, the Watchers also knew of his vital purpose in the universe, so this one wouldn't interfere with his task, either. The Watchers never, ever interfered with anything. They just watched.

But there was someone else here possessing considerable power, as well – two others? Galactus then sensed a sub-space disruption in his vicinity, and dismissed it also as of being of no importance, until-!

"_Galactus!"_ Sailor Pluto yelled, materializing directly in the path of the descending thirty-foot tall giant. _"Stop! I cannot let you consume this world!"_

To her astonishment, Galactus did just that. At Sailor Pluto's sudden appearance, such was the aura of power surrounding her; she had actually held his attention. In a nanosecond, Galactus scanned all that there ever had been, was now, and ever would be of her and her potential – and he was mildly impressed.

"I recognize you, Setsuna Meioh, Sailor Pluto, eldest daughter of Chronos, God of Time," the Star God replied, his face emotionless. "I sense that by the will of your father, you have been prematurely granted your full adult abilities. And I now know why you are here, but you will not stop me from my task. And nor should you even be attempting such. For my purpose is foreordained by the universe itself, and, being who and what you have now become, you must already know that I am only obeying my purpose for existence."

"Yes, I do know that," Sailor Pluto replied, relieved that Galactus had even deigned to speak to her. "And, know you, I also do what I must – and that is to protect innocent lives! And so I say that you shall _not_ consume this world below us!"

"Even in your newly evolved cosmic form, you lack the power to stop me," Galactus stated simply, recommencing his descent.

"Don't move any further!" A second, younger voice beamed out. Sailor Saturn, eyes wide with awe and fear, had materialized next to Sailor Pluto, her Silence glaive in her trembling grasp pointed directly at the towering Eater of Worlds.

Galactus once again stopped. His massive silhouette was in shadow, backlit by the star rising beyond the curvature of the world below them. Only his yellow, glowing eyes were visible on his face as he stared down at the minute figure of his latest annoyance.

"And I recognize you, too, Hotaru Tomoe, teenage Sailor Saturn, Destroyer of Worlds. Your full powers have been recently bestowed upon you, too. So why do you also attempt to stop me – you who carry the sickle of the goddess of death? Do you _really_ not yet realize that you serve a purpose in this galaxy similar to mine?"

"What?" Sailor Saturn gasped with surprise, staring wide-eyed up at the impassive, shadowed face of their adversary, a frightening thirty feet above her own. She had been totally taken aback by what she had just been told. "That can't be true-?!"

"I am a force of nature. You, Hotaru Tomoe, are now 'G' class, which means that so are you - in a way."

"I…I am a-? What – what do you mean b-by that, exactly…?"

"Consider this, Hotaru Tomoe. You periodically destroy a localized planetary system and yourself so that both it and you can be reborn again in pristine form. As for myself, I consume the bio-energy from living worlds, but it is also _my_ destiny to ultimately give back to the universe far more of that life energy than I have ever taken from it. We are both vitally necessary for the evolution of the cosmos. But I am greater than you in the sense that what I do is _beyond_ moral or immoral. For I am not merely a localized agent of change, as you are; I am the _universal catalyst of change_. I exist for an even higher purpose than yours. As a consequence of this, what happens upon my arrival on any world, must be, for the sake of the universe itself."

"_But,_ _but to kill two billion living beings, and countless billions of other life forms in that planet's biosphere…that's inhuman! That is immoral!"_ Hotaru cried out to the sentient force of nature. _"Surely you must also know that?!"_

"I am _not_ a human," Galactus pointed out to the tiny female godling at his feet. "And my deeds are beyond the judgement of any and all beings – including you. You can no more weigh my actions on the balance of good or evil as you could the naturally occurring deeds of a black hole or of a supernova."

"We are _not_ judging you," Sailor Pluto emphasized, still slightly shocked that Galactus had actually bothered to take the time to _explain_ his purpose for being to her teenage daughter. "We are just trying to protect the lives of the two billion sentients on that planet below us! Please, Galactus, just move on and let them be!"

"And if you don't, we _will_ fight to defend them," Sailor Saturn declared bravely, considering that her knees felt as weak as jelly.

"I bear you no malice. But you will not stop me from my repast," came the predictable and dreaded answer from the Space God.

"_Stop, Galactus!"_ Sailor Pluto yelled out a final warning as the giant began his slow descent once again. She hefted the Garnet rod. "I _will_ freeze you in time, if I have to!"

"Stopping the flow of time in this locality will not save the planet below. I am _beyond_ time. Now stand aside. Even enhanced, as you now are, Sailor Pluto, even both you and Sailor Saturn together will prove to be no more than a momentary hindrance to me. You are _not_ my equal. This is your final warning."

"Move back and slightly off to my left, Saturn-chan," Sailor Pluto hissed, all business even though she knew with sickening certainty that they would both almost certainly be dead within the next few minutes. "That will give us both clear fields of fire. We're going to have to fight!"

"Sailor Pluto – Setsuna-mama - are we…are we both going to die…?" Hotaru quailed.

"Yes, Hotaru-chan – probably," Sailor Pluto admitted grimly, her heart hammering with fear, but also a newly found surge of resolve. "If we succeed in annoying him enough. But you, at least, should still be able to come back – maybe even be reborn on Earth again? As for me…well, my future is not quite so clear-cut…!"

Quickly, the two outer senshi drifted backwards and away from each other, both bringing their staff weapons to the ready.

"Now, just make sure that our attacks and his are aimed away from the planet below us," Sailor Pluto instructed her frightened but determined daughter. "We don't want him – or either of us – to hit that world by mistake. If any of us do, the end result at ground level will be cataclysmic!"

"Okay, Mama. I'll remember!"

"Ready?" Sailor Pluto asked, pointing her Garnet rod at their mountainous adversary.

"_Y-yes,"_ Saturn replied, doing the same with her Silence glaive.

"_Dead Star Scream!"_

"_Silence Glaive Apply!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Far below the three ultra-powerful combatants, on the surface of the verdant world he was now on, the Face of Boe paused from his task of supervising the shouting, screaming hordes of the local populace as they raced headlong in panicky flight through the vast, open mouths of the activated Matter Transmitters. For a sudden shudder had just that second rippled through the very fabric of the planet itself, in sympathetic vibration to the titanic energies being unleashed in the heavens far above.

He turned his ancient, lined face skywards, looking out through the atmosphere with his enhanced senses at the chaos unfolding above the now certainly-doomed planet that he was trying to evacuate with too few resources and too little time.

"So it has begun," Boe stated simply. "The beginning of the end."

-:-:-:-:-:-

_**Author's Note: **__Next chapter, the the moment you've all been waiting for - doomsday!_

_We all just know that this is going to end badly. (Or maybe not?)_

_All comments gratefully accepted._


	15. Chapter 15

_I wrote this and even I'm speechless with anticipation._

_Let the battle commence!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER FIFTEEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The pulsing violet ball of white-hot, hyper-concentrated, negatively charged sonic energy – actually a form of semi-solid antimatter - launched by Sailor Pluto would have flattened an entire mountain upon impact, had it been targeted at such on the surface of a planet. Galactus merely shrugged the glowing, ringed ball of destruction away with a movement of his shoulder. He continued his descent with no other reaction than that.

Even at less than full power, Sailor Saturn's Silence glaive could blow away earth-sized planets _in their entirety._ To Galactus, her destructive beam was like a shower of warm rain. To her horror, he continued his relentless advance through the blinding white storm of quantum disruption ribbons without even slowing down!

Sailor Pluto tried another attack - like her first, this one also newly gained after being powered up by the micro big-bang event between the double planets of Yaat.

"_Space/Time Implode!"_

At her command, from the bubbling quantum foam that comprised the very fabric of space itself, a newborn mini black hole immediately expanded up out of nothingness to totally encircle the titanic form of her adversary. For a split-second the light image of Galactus wavered as the fearsome gravity field tugged at his colossal body, trying to compress it down to orders of magnitude smaller than a pinhead.

"_Get back, Hotaru!"_ Pluto screamed out, sensing the invisible wave front of the high-gee snare expanding out towards them. _"That gravity well I just created will drag us both in, too!"_

Instantly, they both teleported several kilometres away from the gravity-sucking monster, further into the void of space, to watch the newly born singularity from a hopefully safe distance.

"_We've done it!"_ Sailor Pluto rejoiced. "He's g-!"

Then Galactus drifted free of the grasp of the Black Hole, as if its colossal gravitational tug was merely the faintest embrace of a drifting cloud of mist.

"_Setsuna-mama! He's still moving!"_

"…_Damn_. Okay, let's go, Hotaru-chan. We can't give up yet – _billions of lives are depending on us!"_

As the two grim-faced sailor scouts approached the Star God's orbital position once more, both being very careful to stay well away from the drifting, still active singularity, this time Galactus actually turned his helmeted head to face them, and his eyes abruptly glowed brighter with a blaze of yellow fire. Next second, twin subatomic disruptor beams flashed from his fiery orbs, first at Sailor Pluto, then his lethal gaze arced towards Sailor Saturn, in turn.

As soon as she saw the deadly glow flaring in the eyes of the omnipotent giant, Sailor Pluto knew what was about to transpire. Her 'Garnet ball' force field couldn't stop such a devastating attack, but she knew of one defence that could.

"_Quantum Rift!"_

"_Silent Wall!"_ Saturn shrieked instinctively as she saw what was happening. A circle of pure darkness instantly enveloped her tiny form - just as the twin disruptor beams struck its ebony surface and vanished into oblivion.

Galactus knew what they had both done, of course. The null field erected by Sailor Saturn had neutralized his attack. Her defensive construct was emitting vibrations at frequencies that were the total opposite of all of the wavelengths of this universe – including his disruptor beams - rendering them harmless, and cancelling them out of existence. When activated, her shielding wall was totally impenetrable by _anything._

What Sailor Pluto had done to thwart his attack was just as simple, and just as effective. She had merely opened a dimensional portal in front of her and sent the twin beams harmlessly into another parallel, totally uninhabited reality before they had come anywhere near her.

Galactus knew that his disruptor beams could, _and had,_ cut completely through entire planets, molten iron cores and all. Yet all that unleashed raw power had been blocked with little effort by the fledgling deities confronting him. _Impressive._

The Eater of Worlds was supposedly devoid of emotion, but it was almost as if the faint hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth at the unexpected bravery and fighting spirit of the two young star-seed humanoid beings confronting him. In all of his uncountable eons of travelling through the galaxies and consuming the life energy of living planets, he had not been challenged by any sentients quite as powerful as them for _millennia._

_Am I, Galactus, actually enjoying myself? That is – unheard of…!_

Then his faint smile disappeared. Sailor Pluto had unexpectedly encased him in a multiple-layered circle of flickering, constantly changing, alternative pocket dimensions in an attempt to remove him from this particular physical location in space/time and get him lost elsewhere in the myriad of invisible sub-space and extra-dimensional realms, all of which were integral building blocks of this many-layered galaxy. At the same time, Sailor Saturn had dropped her impenetrable shield and was concentrating hard, summoning and compressing as much power as she could possibly muster into a single, violet-white hot point of space in front of him.

The onion-like multiple layers of the dimensional trap were as useless against him as the black hole had been. Galactus – capable of being anywhere that he wished to be in _any _physical reality by merely wishing it to be so – simply stepped free of its many-layered embrace.

Sailor Saturn's attack was something else, entirely. Hurriedly she re-erected her Silent Wall, extending it as far as she could – which was now thousands of kilometres - through nearby space to totally enclose and shield herself, Sailor Pluto, the Watcher, the starship _'Ark II'_ and the entirely of the hapless planet below them – just as the close proximity of Galactus to the sphere of primordial energy detonated it!

The resulting blast was unimaginable in its fury. And, unlike their almost identical experience with the white hole that had been born at the exact center of the now atomized inner moon of Yaat, this explosion was totally unrestrained. Reflected away from the two cowering sailor scouts and the rotating, now momentarily lightless blue and white world at their feet by the impenetrable Silent Wall, a sub-space shock wave on the quantum level was flung outwards at far faster than the speed of light by the titanic flare of zero-point energy. Such was the concussive force of the mini Big Bang event, this expanding wave front instantly destabilised the stately orbits of the nearest two of the outer planets of this remote solar system! As the sub-space pulse struck the first massive world that was unlucky enough to be currently in its arc of expansion, and then the second, more distant planet in turn, both remote gas giants heeled over and wobbled violently. Then, under the impetus of the irresistible tide of quantum particles being blasted outwards - on _every_ dimensional level - from their epicentre, the two giant planets abruptly veered off their usual courses, both now heading out of their momentarily twin-sunned solar system on brand new, highly parabolic orbits.

And the two unlucky worlds still had the rapidly approaching gamma-ray pulse – which was travelling at the comparatively snail-paced speed of light – from the seemingly endless explosion to contend with, followed by the remnants of the physical blast wave of energy, as well.

_K-Kami-sama,_ Sailor Pluto thought in a mixture of awe and unease, sensing what had just occurred in the other side of the massive sphere of inky-black energy that was protecting her, her daughter and the suddenly dark world below them from instant annihilation. _Did little Hotaru-chan just unleash that?! Wow! I thought that she could only pull off something on this scale by dropping her Silence glaive to destroy the entire solar system! But this power she just used was something totally different to 'Death Reborn Revolution'._

_I…underestimated her. Even I had no idea that she was _this_ strong, now!_

_And – I still don't know for certain just how powerful I am now, either. What _are_ the upper limits of our powers…? Chronos-papa, because of you, what have we now become?_

Nearly half an hour later, when the glare of the subatomic fire had faded sufficiently for Sailor Saturn to drop her protective shield, they both stared hopefully off in the direction that Galactus had been advancing from. And to their joy, he was nowhere to be seen…except for the fading glow of the still dissipating blast, space in that direction was totally empty of all other movement.

"_Sailor Pluto!"_ Hotaru screamed with delight, waving her Silence glaive above her head like a flag of victory. "He's gone! Galactus is gone! _We've won!"_

"It…certainly seems like that, child," Sailor Pluto remarked in overwhelming relief, icy tears of happiness forming in her eyes. "And Hotaru-chan – _well done!"_

They joyfully embraced each other, and then, still in each other's arms, both sailor senshi turned to commence their descent back down through the atmosphere of the no-doubt joyous world that they had so unexpectedly managed to defend. It was only then that Sailor Saturn noticed something definitely unusual in nearby space.

"Sailor Pluto?"

"Yes, Hotaru-chan?"

"If we did beat Galactus, why is the Watcher still here," the teenage sailor scout queried with a frown, gesturing towards the distant, shadowy, toga-clad figure of their bald headed observer. "He should have gone by now, shouldn't he?"

At her puzzled words, Sailor Pluto's heart froze with fear as she realized what that ominous portent must mean.

"_Hotaru-chan! Be on your guard! It's not over yet! Galactus must be still out there somewhere!"_

Whirling around to face back out into deep space, the keen eyes of the pair quickly picked out a distant pinpoint of white light moving swiftly in their direction. The dot rapidly expanded as it approached, resolving itself into a white-hot fireball, _a humanoid-shaped fireball…!_

_An enormous and very angry humanoid-shaped fireball! Galactus!_

"_Silent wall!"_ Hotaru screamed in terror, throwing up her Silence glaive in an unconscious attempt to protect them both from the fury of their unbelievably powerful returning attacker.

But this time she was too late! Galactus had created two null fields of his own – one materializing around Sailor Saturn's Silence glaive, the other enclosing Sailor Pluto's Garnet rod. Unable to hold on to their artifacts, both objects slipped from the dismayed sailor scouts fingers, to slowly drift off through nearby space.

A split second later, before either Sailor Pluto or Sailor Saturn could even begin to react to the loss of their staff weapons, Galactus mentally disrupted the nerve synapses of their physical bodies, cutting off the electrical signals from their brains, paralysing both sailor scouts instantly. Neither girl could now fight or flee. They were trapped, totally at the mercy of the Devourer of Worlds!

Realizing that the two sailor senshi were now totally helpless, the fiery sentience came to a sudden halt right in front of them, the raging flames immediately being absorbed back into his giant frame as Galactus resumed his former shape, just before the searing tendrils could engulf and vaporize his powerless adversaries. A few seconds later, having cooled sufficiently in the nearly absolute zero temperature of open space to allow him to do so without risk of burning them, Galactus gripped one of the motionless girls in each of his gloved hands. He then raised them up to his eye-level and stared at them with a look that turned their nerveless bodies to shivering jelly.

And then the Star God spoke.

"My attacks against you were a measured response designed not to damage the surrounding fabric of space-time in this planetary system," Galactus intoned, his telepathic voice as cold as icy breath from the grave. "Yours, on the other hand, showed no such concern. That mini black hole and the dimensional trap you devised are ample proof of that, Sailor Pluto."

"Did you not stop to consider what would have happened when – not if - they both collided? The black hole would have sucked in the dimensional trap within mere minutes; they are so close together in space. This would have created a multi-dimensional black hole that would feed on matter from thousands of other dimensions, not just this insignificant one we currently inhabit. It would then have grown at a exponential rate, simultaneously consuming entire solar systems in these thousands of other dimensions, and causing incalculable damage to the fabric of this entire galaxy itself!"

Momentarily turning his head away from the terror-filled pair, Galactus dissolved both of the slowly-but-definitely converging cosmic abnormalities away with a nod, before rounding back on them with severity.

"And as for you, Sailor Saturn – creating a small nova so close to a populated world is inexcusable. The resulting gamma ray pulse was so intense that you could have destroyed the living life force of that planet below us before I have had the chance to consume it. Furthermore, such was the undirected force of your thoughtless attack, you fried the atmospheres of the two closest outer planets in this solar system, _and_ broke them free from their eons-old orbits. Now, hear you this. Because of the recklessness of your actions, I have judged that you are both too dangerous to the order of the galaxy to be allowed to continue on your way."

"_What?!_ But you would've eaten that planet behind us, anyway," Sailor Saturn mentally cried out. "I was trying to save it from you!"

"_Silence!"_ Galactus roared, his eyes glowing again, this time with fury. "It is my destiny to return to the universe all the life force that I have taken from it, and more! You, on the other hand, could have wiped out the portion of it possessed by that world, forever!"

Poor Hotaru could take no more. In her terror, her eyes glazed over, and mercifully she fainted.

Using only the power of his mind, Galactus then transferred the unconscious Sailor Saturn across to the suddenly unfrozen arms of Sailor Pluto, her slender body held securely in his other hand.

"Sailor Pluto, Sailor Saturn. Through your own ill-judged actions, you have incurred the wrath of Galactus. Prepare for my judgement."

"_Never! Planet Power will defeat you!" _Pluto's mind defiantly beamed back to him.

"Your world of Pluto is merely a tiny ball of frozen rock and ice. You lack the power to stop me. But you _have _slowed me down – and that I cannot countenance." Galactus raised his car-sized free hand. "Know you this, at my hand, neither of you will be reborn again in _any_ guise. I shall erase you from all space/time in this universe, _forever."_

"As you cannot escape me, I grant you both full movement again. And now, awaken, Hotaru Tomoe. It is time for you to also know and receive your well-deserved punishment."

At his fateful words, Hotaru's eyes snapped open, widening with misery as she raised her head to stare at her impassive judge. Knowing that the game was up, Sailor Pluto hugged Hotaru to her tightly and whispered into the ear of her trembling daughter. "Just close your eyes, Hotaru-chan – it'll be all over in a second. _I love you."_

"I love you too, Setsuna-mama…! _Goodbye."_

"_Wait."_

The sudden, strange voice had seemed to come from everywhere, and yet nowhere at the same time. Sailor Pluto's eyes widened with hope. Could it have been…_The Watcher? Or even the Face of Boe? _No, it had been someone – _or something_ – else. And she was positive that she had heard that deep, very familiar sounding voice not all that long ago, as well…!

An enormous grey shadow had appeared in the very fabric of space beside them. As her eyes fell upon the wispy apparition, Sailor Pluto's heart leapt with joy when she realised just who it was.

_It's my __Otōsan__! He's actually left Chronos castle to save us!_

"I am Chronos, the embodiment of time for this galaxy," the shadow being declared, in a voice more ancient than the present generation of distant stars that surrounded them – and the previous generation before them, as well. "I came into being at the birth of my spiral galaxy, 13. 2 Billion years ago, and I will be here at its ultimate demise. I control the flow of time in this stellar realm, on _all_ of its levels of existence."

Galactus turned his attention from Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn to face the ghostlike cosmic form of the Elder God.

"I am Galactus," the living force of nature replied formally, in tones just as imposing. "I am the sole survivor from the Universe that existed before the one we now inhabit came into being. My purpose is to drive evolution and change in this new universe. My hunger must be appeased, so that this barred spiral galaxy that is your domain, and the entire universe itself, evolves on its correct path towards its final, glorious, future destiny."

"True. But be as that may, Galactus, your battle here with my child is destabilising my realm of space/time in this location," Chronos declared, dropping the formality and immediately getting to the point of his most unexpected, though extremely timely, appearance. "Already this solar system we are currently in has been badly damaged by your confrontation…two outer worlds have broken their orbits, and nearby space was full of space/time rifts, quantum tears and singularities. I sense that you have already erased all of the latter, as expected, but as for this fighting, I say, _no more."_

"As you are not doubt aware, Chronos, it was the reckless actions of your pugnacious offspring and her overly destructive companion that are responsible for the majority of the chaos afflicting this solar system," Galactus pointed out. "Furthermore, because of their vigorous but futile resistance against the inevitability of what will soon occur, these two impudent young star-seeds have momentarily delayed me from my ordained mission. For all of these reasons, I have judged them both, and found them sorely wanting."

"All you have said is true," Chronos admitted. "But in mitigation, I also know that they were trying to gain time for the inhabitants of that world below to flee, with the help of the Face of Boe, before you consumed it. Trying to save sentient life is a praiseworthy act, not one worthy of your anger. Furthermore, it has been said that Galactus would pass by an inhabited world if other suitable worlds without physical life forms were nearby."

"There are none nearby. In this sector of space, this is the only suitable one. My hunger must be fed, and I will brook no further interference from your child, or anyone else."

"I have already foreseen that my eldest daughter and Sailor Saturn are not fated to perish here at your hands," the God of Time declared. "On the contrary, they are both destined to return to the solar system of Sol, to help defend its worlds against numerous future threats. So I now make you this solemn promise - spare them, and I will personally see to it that they will not interfere with your ordained duty here any more."

Galactus gave thought to the Elder God's words, and came to a decision. Chronos was about as near to being his equal as any other entity in the entire known universe. And these two young 'G' class children _had _managed to impress him, after all…and that wasn't easy to do.

"It matters not whether they go, or stay here and perish at my hands," he finally declared. "I care not. My journey will go on. Very well. I release them both into your charge."

"I have now re-stabilized the orbits of the two damaged planets," Chronos informed the star god. "Proceed with your task, Galactus. You will be hindered no more by them, _or_ by me."

"Very well. Farewell."

With that, Galactus resumed his interrupted descent without another word.

Abruptly solidifying out of the invisible fabric of space itself and shrinking his cosmic shape down into his usual eight-foot tall human form, Chronos materialized before the two very relieved sailor senshi.

"There. This familiar human guise and persona I have assumed should be more comfortable for you both to talk to."

"_Chronos-papa!"_ Sailor Pluto bowed, and stepped forward to give her now physical father a quick hug. "Thank you for saving us." Chronos laughed, then reached forward and tussled the trembling Sailor Saturn's hair.

"Yes, thank you, Chronos-dono," Saturn said in a quavering voice, bowing _very_ low before his massive and majestic presence.

"Arise, child. I have another reason to be here now, apart from the obvious one. For it is high time that I told you both the full truth as to why I have banished you to the far side of the galaxy. It was because you broke the law and stopped time, yes, but there was also another, more practical reason. Setsuna-chan, you already knew that you would gain vastly greater powers on your twentieth birthday, did you not?"

"Yes, father, I did. But, going by the measurement of Earth-time, it's nowhere near my birthday yet. So…why did you cause my full powers to manifest themselves early-?"

"And Hotaru-chan, your full cosmic abilities have been activated at the same time as my oldest daughter's were?" Lord Chronos continued, ignoring Pluto's inquiry for the moment. "Well, speak up, girl!"

"Ah, y-yes, Sir. They have."

"Good. For that is the second reason why you both are here, on the far side of the galactic core, right now," Chronos told them. "You, Setsuna, and Hotaru have been banished to this remote, dead sector of the galaxy not only so that you could receive your full adult abilities earlier than you would otherwise have gained them, but also so that you could learn to use these new abilities carefully – _and wisely. _You both are now far too powerful to train with your new cosmic powers anywhere near Earth's own Solar System – and I did not want to have to take the responsibility for repairing any shattered moons or dampening down rogue solar flares if you did make a mistake while practicing amongst your native worlds."

Setsuna and Hotaru glanced at each other and grimaced at the truth in Chronos's words. The unintended destruction caused during their battle against Galactus was proof enough of that!

"Furthermore, I foresaw that Galactus would be in the vicinity at this time," Chronos continued. "He made a suitable sparring partner for you both to practice on, didn't he?"

Sailor Pluto stared hard at her father, the light of understanding now in her red eyes. "So it was _you_ who amplified my sailor-teleport in the first place, and caused Hotaru-chan and I to appear near this isolated star – just before Galactus was due to arrive here?"

"Yes," Chronos admitted. "It was I. Now listen, for what I am now about to say is _very_ important. Your futile battle against Galactus had the additional benefit of teaching you and young Hotaru-chan three very important lessons that will serve you well in times to come."

"_Huh?!"_ Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn chorused, dumbfounded expressions on their faces at what they were hearing.

"The first lesson you should have now learned was to take care when you use your new powers. The two destabilized planets caused by your nova blast, Sailor Saturn, and the near-convergence of your black hole and dimensional rift, Setsuna-chan, are ample proof of what might go wrong if you don't, I think."

"_Um_, yes," the two errant sailor senshi mumbled together.

"The second one is for you both not to try to stop certain events in the universe that are foredestined to occur," Chronos continued in his oratorical tone. "Some things in the universe are meant to be, and cannot be changed, no matter how powerful or well meaning you are. I know this, the Watcher over there knows this, the Face of Boe knows this – and now, you two do, as well."

"The third lesson - some humility towards your wiser and more powerful elders. Your near-death at the hands of Galactus, and me having to haul your butts out of the frying pan are ample proof of the wisdom of that, too."

And then mighty Chronos, God of Time, let out a loud chuckle of merriment at the stunned expressions on the faces of the two outer senshi at what they had just heard from him. At that moment he would have been willing to bet that they couldn't have looked more gobsmacked if he had just slapped both of them in the face with a wet fish.

At last Sailor Pluto trusted herself to speak.

"Yes, I do now understand the purpose behind these – _ah_ - unexpected lessons. But - but you're telling us now that this whole confrontation with Galactus was just a _training session_ for us?!" she burst out, a riot of conflicting emotions warring for prominence on her beautiful face. "We had to go through what we thought was a life-and-death situation just for a practice bout?"

"Ha! It _was_ a life-and-death situation," Chronos assured his flabbergasted eldest daughter, sobering up at her agitation. "If I hadn't saved you from him, Galactus _would _have shuffled off your immortal coil, without a doubt. Here, don't forget your Garnet Rod."

"And what about the billions of sentients on the planet below us that Galactus is about to destroy?" Sailor Pluto yelled out, snatching at her staff that had materialized next to her. "Not even the Face of Boe can save most of them! They're all about to die! You saved us, but why haven't you lifted a finger to save them, too?!"

"_That's…that's right,"_ Sailor Saturn agreed in a very small voice, clutching at her reclaimed Silence Glaive, overawed as she always was by the sheer presence of The Elder God. "They're all doomed!"

"Not so," Chronos boomed. "Look."

Even as the huge shape of Galactus entered the atmosphere below them, trailing flames like a meteor, the topography of the planet itself seemed to change. Broad, dimly-seen flat sections of the curved blue, brown and green surface below them seemed to rotate very slowly into different configurations, accompanied by a bizarre and much faster whirl of strange white wisps and patterns of color, mixed with a very rapid flickering of black and white light, like that cast from a giant strobe light. For about twenty seconds, these strange phenomena continued, then they cut out as suddenly as they had begun.

"_Um_ - what just happened?" Hotaru timidly queried. "I felt – _something…?" _

"I did, too," Sailor Pluto confirmed. "Father, what did you do?"

"Galactus has landed on the surface of the planet. It is time for us to depart," Chronos told them with finality in his voice, ignoring their questions for the moment. Far, far below them, the first columns of mile-wide flame were beginning to arise into the shrieking air as the Eater of Worlds commenced melting his way down through the hundreds of miles of rock and mantle towards the molten iron core of the doomed planet.

"Wave goodbye to the Watcher, you two, and then we're off." Chronos then made the tiniest gesture with one finger, and instantly a Space/Time Wormhole expanded up from nothingness right next to their hovering forms.

"There. That should do it. Normally I travel along a Super-String at the quantum level of the universe for speed, but that type of journey for you two would be – _uncomfortable."_

"_Oh, yay!"_ Hotaru burst out with happiness, clapping her hands soundlessly together at the welcome sight of the cosmic shortcut. "We're going to go back home to Earth! I'll get to see Chibiusa-chan and my other friends again!"

"Is that true?" Sailor Pluto hopefully asked her father, turning her despairing gaze away momentarily from the blazing death below her. She had seen that the doomed planet's very atmosphere, itself, had now begun to burn…

"Oh, you two Star Seed selves aren't going home, just yet," Chronos declared, fixing his oldest daughter with a frown. "Your well-deserved banishment for disobeying me and altering the time-line of Earth is _far_ from over, I assure you! But, now that you have had a bit of practice with your enhanced abilities, and know what – and more importantly - _what_ _not_ to do with them, it is time that you visited a more inhabited sector of our galaxy. You miscreants can find your own way back to Earth from there – if you can."

_Ah, damn! I should have guessed that it wasn't going to be that easy, _Pluto sourly thought as the trio glided into the mouth of the hole in space-time._ Otōsan means what he says. Hotaru-chan and I are still screwed!_

_...Still, powered up as we both now are, it should be a lot easier for us to make our own way back home than it was before..._

As they sped along together through the wormhole, the still-upset Sailor Pluto's thoughts returned to what had happened before they had departed the vicinity of the doomed planet. She had seen the very shape and hue of the continents below inexplicably change somehow. Even before Galactus had commenced sucking the living world into a dry, barren, cratered desert, the whole planet had looked – _different._

_How? Why?_

"I don't understand," Sailor Pluto finally declared, giving voice to her confused thoughts. "There were two billion living beings on that world behind us. How could you just leave most of them there to die? I know that Galactus only does what he was ordained by the universe to do, but the sacrifice of so many innocent lives…?"

"Don't distress yourself, daughter. Like the Face of Boe always does, every single inhabitant of that planet survived his or her encounter with Galactus. Most of the other life forms there did, as well."

"_Great! But how?"_ Sailor Pluto demanded. "It would have taken the inhabitants months, if not years, to fully evacuate their planet. There just wasn't time for them to do so, even with the help of the Face of Boe and _Ark II_! And you have to tell me this, Father! Just before we left, why did the planet below look to be so different from what it was before?"

"Simple," mighty Chronos replied, a twinkle in his eyes. "Before Galactus managed to land on the surface, I granted the Face of Boe and the inhabitants of the planet _a few million years of extra time to safely get away."_

-:-:-:-:-:-

_**Author's Note: **I'll bet you weren't expecting _that _to happen, were you? Even more awesomeness __next chapter._

_This story arc is not _quite_ finished yet..._


	16. Chapter 16

_...And here it is, the final chapter (for now, anyway)._

_See Author's note at end for more information._

_Onwards...!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**SAILOR MOON: BANISHED  
**_**CHAPTER SIXTEEN - EPILOGUE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Approximately half way between the very distant streams of massed, luminescent star clusters that comprised two entirely separate main spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, a solitary spark of radiance glowed by itself in the black void. For this was the only bright beacon of starlight to be found in almost the entirety of this extremely remote expanse of deepest space.

A yellow, medium sized G-class sun rotated slowly in splendid isolation here, nearly one sixty light years away from its nearest fiery neighbor, accompanied only by its gravity-bound retinue of planets and moons. These diverse worlds had, over billions of years, gobbled up the vast majority of the myriad free-floating chunks of primordial rubble left over from when the original protoplanetary debris disk had coalesced into said planets and planetary companions.

But, very recently, this eons-old state of equilibrium had changed, and not for the better. And as a consequence of this change, for once the habitable zone of this particular very remote solar system _wasn't_ almost completely devoid of loose fragments of matter.

Part of nearby space was now crowded. Crowded because the world-shattering catastrophe responsible for this unprecedented state of affairs had strewn uncountable chunks of debris along the orbital path of a now vanished planet.

Where once the Earth-like world known as Midway had spun proudly through space, there now existed only a massive asteroid belt of tumbling, disintegrating, occasionally colliding chunks of rock and metallic ore, the remnants of the shattered planet ranging in size from dust specks up to that of flying mountain ranges. These larger, stately, slowly rotating giants were even now being subjected to a ferocious and ceaseless bombardment from the swirling showers of small rocks and gravel, speckling their every angular surface with random flashes of light, the twinkling punctuated by longer-lived tongues of fire from more substantial rock fragments as they vaporized upon impact with the brand new asteroids. And floating in the midst of this fiery, eerily silent chaos was the giant figure of the being responsible for doomsday on this once inhabited planet – Galactus.

Galactus, the omnipotent Eater of Worlds.

This world and all that had dwelt upon it were gone. But no intelligent lives had been lost this day. For Chronos, the God of Time had seen to that.

At the time of his descent, Galactus had been fully aware of what Chronos was doing to save the life forms that inhabited the biosphere below him. But the scheming of the God of Time hadn't caused the Devourer of Worlds even an iota of concern, for he knew that the life force of the planet would still be intact, even after the passage of so many extra years it was being granted. So, as Galactus had drifted down through the increasingly dense atmosphere of the doomed planet, he had allowed the localized field of hyper-accelerated time below him to pass unhindered, before finally landing on the now totally uninhabited surface of his planetary repast, a full two million years into its future.

And then, without further ado, he had sunk his way right down into the molten iron core of the unlucky world, splitting the hapless planet asunder and draining it of all of its life energy in the process.

This task had taken the better part of an earth day to fully accomplish. And now that his absorption of the entirety of the life energy was finally complete -

Galactus gestured, and the uncountable billions of shattered, spinning remnants of what had once been a blue-green world teeming with life forms, began to visibly regather and compact themselves back down in a maelstrom of fire and fury into a single, planet-sized mass once again. In a comparatively short amount of time, by dint of its own now steadily-increasing gravitational field, the fragmented planet would reform back into its original size and mass, albeit now totally devoid of any life force. Of course, it would then take millions of years for the newborn planet's molten surface to solidify and then cool sufficiently for new microbial life to take hold upon it's barren, heavily cratered, erupting surface, even with the help of the rain of alien Oort cloud cometary fragments from the outer regions of this star that he had also simultaneously set into motion. Over thousands, even millions of years to come, the innumerable swarm of primordial icy fragments would fall sunward; to eventually impact upon the newly re-formed world of Midway. In doing so, the flying ice balls would melt and release their precious water as exploding clouds of steam - water that, one day, would form brand new oceans, lakes and rivers in the planet's lowland areas.

With a suitable habitat once more present, the seeds of life would quickly return to this freshly minted world, take hold in the barren wastelands, and flourish. Over the millennia, the planet's life force would grow strong once again.

And then, maybe in five hundred million years time, maybe a billion, he would eventually return to this far-flung, isolated world once again – and start the whole cycle of death and rebirth all over again.

After all, the Star God had plenty of time to come this way once again.

He had until the universe itself finally came to its end, to do so.

But this return visit would take place in the almost immeasurably far future. In the present, now that his hunger was fully sated, Galactus had two much more immediate tasks to carry out.

Firstly, he had to travel two million years backwards in time, back to the isolated solar system of Midway as it had been before the subtle intervention of Chronos.

With Galactus, to think was to act. The Star God faded from view as the normal flow of time reversed itself around him. As he did so, Galactus timed his reappearance in the distant past to occur a microsecond after he had vanished into the accelerated time field surrounding the planet that, millennia into its future, he had just consumed.

He also made sure to arrive back in the correct time period at a location some distance away from his future planetary feast. To that end, the Eater of Worlds rematerialized one light year out from the solitary sun, way out in the black void of interstellar space.

Now that he was back in the present time, Galactus gave thought to the second task he needed to accomplish.

The star god knew of course, what Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn had done to provoke their banishment by Chronos, the God of Time. That information had come to him when he had scanned Sailor Pluto's mind prior to their recently concluded confrontation.

Galactus also realized the two enhanced sailor senshi did not yet know that their audacious plan to reset their original time line back on Earth had failed. Their actions had instead compounded an already bad situation and made it far worse.

Thanks to the unauthorized deeds of these two young star-seeds, what had been one time line on one planet in one solar system had now become three of each. For two entirely new dimensions of space/time had come into being, both running parallel to the original one, all three stretching right out to the inner edge of the Oort cloud of cometary fragments that ringed the original solar system, where the trio of alternate realities merged together back into the one original dimension and universe again.

Galactus did _not_ approve of what the errant pair had done. By changing an event that had already happened – was _meant_ to have happened – the irresponsible duo had upset the natural balance of this galaxy, just to fulfill their own selfish desire to save a few friends and prevent a minuscule war. The situation demanded to be corrected – and he was just the entity to do it.

Still, despite the feast of life energy on the original Planet Earth and the two 'imposter' Earths that awaited him at the distant scene of the universe-altering temporal crime that had been committed, Galactus was in no real hurry to arrive on location.

The solar system of Sol was on the far side of the galaxy from his current position. Why waste energy by teleporting himself directly to this particular cosmic abnormality, when there was a multitude of other verdant planets full of life energy ready and waiting for him to consume on his journey there?

Galactus would get to the unsuspecting trio of Planet Earths in his own good time. Certainly within a couple of Earth years, as measured by the time scale of its microscopically insignificant inhabitants.

And once he had arrived on location?

The two duplicate Earths – and the entirety of the copied solar systems that contained them - would all have to go. That meant collapsing the two newly created dimensions back into the nothingness from which they had come, after first consuming the life energy on the Planet Earth copies they contained, of course. Three alternate realities would become one once again, and the cosmic balance would be restored back to normality.

As for the original Planet Earth, its wide landmasses and even wider oceans overflowing with life-giving sustenance, a very tempting plum just waiting for him to consume…?

Galactus concluded that he would wait and see.

For this far distant prize was, after all, _the _Planet Earth.

Planet Earth, the current homeworld of the latest incarnation of this particular galaxy's Supreme Divine Being.

In this case, the 'divine being' that Galactus was thinking of was _not_ Chronos, the conceptual God of Time for this space/time region - even though that cosmic entity had been based on an outer dwarf planet in the very same solar system that contained Earth for the last several million years. Besides, Chronos was not a potential threat to his new mission because - just like the Watcher that also inhabited the planetary system of Sol - he would not interfere with it, even at the imminent destruction of the real Earth itself.

This correct state of non-interference also held true for all of the other true 'G' and 'O' class conceptual, physical or metaphysical intelligences to be found in this particular galaxy. These very few transcendent races that were capable of putting up any serious resistance against him, such as the Vorlons, the Celestials, the long-absent Golden tribe and the few remaining representatives of the Hero tribe, were all fully conversant of the real purpose behind the seemingly cruel and destructive actions of the Eater of Worlds. None of the truly great and mighty would seek to bar his way.

Nor was Galactus concerned about any possible resistance from the assortment of minor so-called gods, deities, _Kami, _sailor senshi and the various supernatural and extraterrestrial representatives who also called Earth and/or its solar system 'home'. Compared to him, even the mightiest of them were but small fry, ranging from 'S' class up to a few high-ranked 'I', with one or two lower true 'G' class at the very most. Sensing what was about to happen to their homeworld, the vast majority of those who were capable of doing so would flee into space well before his arrival on Earth. Very few, if any, of the foolhardy remainder would dare to confront him.

Notwithstanding the vow of Chronos, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn would almost certainly do just that for a second time, of course. Despite the cosmic forms both now possessed, the pair were very young for true 'G' class beings, and consequently still burdened with totally unnecessary emotions. This unfortunate state of affairs meant that with their adopted homeworld in dire peril from him, false sentimentality would almost certainly outweigh both the knowledge of the inviolability of his mission and their own common sense.

Their efforts at resistance would once again come to nothing. Even as strong as the enhanced sailor senshi now were, the outcome of any further encounter between him and them would never be in doubt.

Of these few other superior beings who would stand and fight against him, only one of them possessed the raw power to be a real threat to the will of Galactus…

Galactus was reflecting on this one notable exception to the rule, the mightiest of his potential adversaries _by far_. This singular entity was the one true, _all-encompassing_ God, whose domain _included_ that of Chronos and every other so-called deity in this sizeable spiral galaxy. In other words, the entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy – space, time, and dimensional – embodied in and controlled in its totality by one solitary individual, born _very_ recently in mortal form on Earth, and still currently residing there.

Unfortunately, unlike Chronos and the other great powers that resided amongst this vast, swirling island of stars, this latest reincarnation of the supreme galactic being in human form was far too young and provincial to even know of the existence of Galactus, let alone possess the knowledge pertaining to the inviolability of the vital cosmic mission that he had come into being, billions of years ago, to carry out and eventually complete. And therein lay the complication.

After deliberating for a couple more milliseconds, the Star God decided on his provisional plan of action. Once he had arrived at his far-flung destination, the yellow sun named Sol; he would first collapse the two other-dimensional, imposter solar systems back into nothingness, first one and then the other. Only then would he decide on the fate of the one remaining, true Planet Earth. Then, if he did decide to complete the trifecta and drain the original world of its life energy, and this singular individual now inhabiting it attempted to stop him-?

The resulting clash between him and the embodiment of the entire localized cosmos in human form would be titanic in its scope. But it was one that Galactus knew he should be able to win – maybe not easily, but certainly eventually.

For Galactus was _Galactus,_ after all. He was the _universal_ catalyst of change – by overwhelming force if necessary.

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**THE END.**

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**_Author's Note:_**_ Well, that's it for now. I hope that you the readers have all enjoyed this story as much as I have in writing it._

_And now for the good news - there's actually more of this storyline to come. But not just yet. Time to catch up on my other, long-neglected stories, methinks._

_Feel free to post any questions or comments in a review, reader feedback is always much appreciated._


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